Interpol Recharges For Summer Festival Run

Interpol will return to duty this summer for a run of European and North American festival dates, beginning July 3 at Norway's Quart Festival.

The trek will likely be the last in support of the band's 2007 Capitol debut, "Our Love To Admire," before it gets busy on its next album. "We didn't really do much of the summer festivals last year," drummer Sam Fogarino tells Billboard.com. "It will be the last hit-it-home, end-on-a-good note."

Fogarino admits "Admire," which followed two albums for Matador, was "a big turning point for the band internally, as well as creatively." The album has sold 194,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan; Interpol's two prior sets have each sold at least 477,000 units.

"Switching labels and working with a co-producer, and not working at Peter [Katis]' studio, it was all these new firsts all at one time," he says. "It rattled the foundations a little bit. Never to the extreme, but things finally felt realistic. The first two albums were kind of a blur. We could never believe what was going on. Now our feet are touching the ground."

Fogarino says he and the other Interpol members "are all getting ready to get back into" crafting a new batch of material. "I'm guessing in the fall we'll get together and start hearing what [guitarist] Daniel [Kessler]'s been up to."

But first, Fogarino has some new music of his own to share, in the form of the self-titled debut EP from Magnetic Morning. The group finds him in collaboration with Swervedriver frontman Adam Franklin on songs he's been accumulating since Interpol got started.

Magnetic Morning has only played live once so far (last December at New York's Mercury Lounge), but Fogarino is hoping the band will embark on its first tour in the fall.

"It's just so rare, especially being in Interpol the past eight years," he says of returning to the club level. "It's only natural that you take each other for granted. You get lost in the whole thing and realize how fortunate the situation is. A tight band in a small room and everybody's smiling -- I'll go through that again just to experience it. From Madison Square Garden back to Mercury Lounge -- It doesn't happen that much. I'm having my cake and eating it too."

Source: Billboard.com