Interpol calling

Interpol singer Paul Banks stands motionless in front of a sold-out crowd at the Glen Helen Pavilion in Devore, affecting a kind of stiff anti-pose over his Les Paul, his face on the Jumbotron transmitting a strange attitude to the lawn-seaters seemingly miles away in the sun. He’s not gushing charisma; he’s not selling the lyrics; he’s not even really putting on a show.

The pale 25-year-old with a foppish swoop of hair across his forehead wears a bemused, almost defiant look, as though challenging the 15,000 fans at KROQ-FM’s third annual Inland Invasion: Try to define us. Neither the band’s clean-cut look nor its New Wave sound fits neatly into any kind of marketing slot.

But Interpol’s dark, minimalist war-drum rock has a whiff of danger to it, an urgency notably missing from other New Wave bands on the bill -- the Psychedelic Furs, for example, or the Violent Femmes. Banks is the face of Interpol’s odd allure: the taut, almost unbearable tension so reminiscent of the dark mechanics of Joy Division but without Ian Curtis’ seething anguish.

Banks’ stoic countenance, in fact, perfectly fits the abstract poetry of his lyrics as he crisply intones the words to “Stella Was a Diver and She Was Always Down,” off the band’s only album, 2002’s “Turn On the Bright Lights:” “She was all right cuz the sea was so air-tight / she broke away.” Bassist Carlos Dengler puts more action and pose into his playing, kind of a double for Crispin Glover in a skinny tie and slick black hair, as does suit-and-tie-clad guitarist Daniel Kessler, recently voted one of the “50 Coolest People in Rock” by Britain’s NME. But Banks’ presence is magnetic, involving a certain physical restraint that gives the music discipline and seriousness.

That discipline and seriousness have earned Interpol critical raves and a die-hard following among a certain snobbier set of post-punk fans. The band is up for a 2003 Shortlist Prize, the new U.S. award meant to be an equivalent to Britain’s prestigious, peer- and journalist-judged Mercury Prize. Interpol’s music isn’t pop, and it isn’t predictably angry -- it’s merely tightly wound in a way that makes it feel important. And that, says Banks, is exactly what he and his bandmates were looking for.

“We’re not going to put a stamp on it like: ‘This is art. Take it seriously,’ ” says Banks, caught on a cellphone while standing outside a coffee shop on the Lower East Side of New York City, the band’s hometown. “That’s absolutely not the way that I see it. But that’s just sort of what I want to do. I take it seriously.”

The men of Interpol have definitely done their homework on the darker side of ‘80s U.K. New Wave bands, sounding sometimes like Echo & the Bunnymen, the Psychedelic Furs and the Smiths. But the band has an indefinable international feel to it that seems the product of their peripatetic upbringings as well as the sound of post-punk New York.

Kessler, acknowledged as the driving force behind the band, was born in London and lived in France and Washington, D.C., before meeting Banks in Paris on foreign study from New York University. Banks is also English, though he has a flat Midwestern American accent; born in the beach resort town of Clacton-on-Sea, he lived in Michigan, Spain, New Jersey and finally Mexico before he also ended up at NYU. Dengler is a Queens native and the band’s most resolute goth; the name of his NYU radio show was “Theatrum Aethereum.” Drummer Sam Fogarino is 10 years older than the others, a veteran of Florida punkers the Holy Terrors, and joined Interpol in 2000, in time to record the debut album.

“Turn On the Bright Lights” is dark but not melodramatic. The tension in the music and the sophisticated lyrics are consistently rewarding, even after a lot of listening. These songs contain some brilliant descriptions of the strain in modern personal relationships, like those from “PDA,” the first single (nominated for a 2002 MTV Video Music Award): “You are the only person / who’s completely certain that there’s nothing here to be into.”

None of it, however, is terribly morose. It’s still a rock band that wants to make cathartic music. Banks once said in an interview that there was more sex in Interpol’s music than there was melancholy.

“I think it’s more about drive, yeah,” he explains. “And longing. A lot of the intense spectrum of emotion is encompassed by the need for, and the loss of, and the lack of, sex and love.”

So they acquired a sense of humor and learned to embrace the red carpet treatment at events like the Shortlist ceremonies.

“That wasn’t really the impetus behind Interpol starting as a group, but I would happily co-host ‘TRL’ any day,” Banks laughs, then catches himself. “Arrrhhh, well, I don’t know. ‘Can you believe this?’ would be the expression on my face.”

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Interpol

Where: Hollywood Palladium, 6215 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood

When: Wednesday and Oct. 2, 6:30 p.m.

Price: $20

Contact: (323) 962-7600