Interpol’s Sam Fogarino began writing songs for his EmptyMansions project back in 2009 while on tour in support of Interpol’s fourth album, and he continued to write the songs while on the road with the band thru 2011. The result is snakes/vultures/sulfate, due out this April on Riot House Records. Fogarino explains, “In November 2011, at the completion of a fifteen month long tour…I found that I had finally arrived at EmptyMansions. A long time coming; not without effort, but rather without force—This alone took years to figure out.” After wrestling with the songs for as long as he had, Fogarino discovered it was his duty to sing them too, saying, “The songs that I had written, I not only liked, but had to sing myself. There was no choice in the matter. To do it any other way would have rendered the whole endeavor dishonest and pointless.” However, that didn’t mean he couldn’t also enlist the help of Interpol producer Brandon Curtis to plays bass, keyboards, and sing backing vocals for the record, in addition to his engineering role, as well as enlisting guitar heavy weight Duane Denison (The Jesus Lizard, Tomahawk, Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers) to really fill out the project. snakes/vultures/sulfate closes with this stellar cover of Neil Young’s “Down By the River“, on which EmptyMansions repurposes the song by applying a modern spin to it, without losing the song’s quirky, raggedy soul…complete with those supremely precious “la-la-la”‘s. Now that’s attention to detail.
