INTERPOL, THIS MIRROR WEIGHS A TON

It's been nearly 25 years since Interpol released their debut album, Turn On the Bright Lights. For a band this far into its career, there would be plenty of reasons to simply keep doing what they had always done. Instead, when it came time to make their latest album, This Mirror Weighs a Ton, there seems to have been a real desire to shake things up.

Part of it came from lead singer and songwriter Paul Banks having a different sense of purpose this time around. Since the band's last album, he's become a father to two children. He has talked about how fatherhood has made his career seem less important compared with his family, while at the same time making the music itself matter more. If he was going to spend time away from his family making another Interpol album, he wanted it to be worth it. As Banks put it, “Let’s make this one count.”

Part of it came from returning to New York to record for the first time in more than a decade. After making much of The Other Side of Make-Believe apart during the pandemic, the band wanted to get back into a room together. They also brought in longtime friend Andrew Wyatt to produce, and his role went well beyond simply recording the band. Wyatt became part of the creative process, pushing Interpol toward sounds and arrangements they might not otherwise have considered.

You can hear this throughout This Mirror Weighs a Ton. Strings, woodwinds, acoustic guitars, keyboards, layered vocals, and all sorts of unusual sounds find their way into the arrangements. Yet it still sounds unmistakably like Interpol. Daniel Kessler has talked about rediscovering some of the excitement of experimentation while making the album, and that's probably what I like most about it. After all these years, they're still curious about where else their music can go.

Banks's change in perspective also seems to have affected what he's writing about. He has become more engaged with what is happening in the world, and This Mirror Weighs a Ton takes on surveillance, war, misinformation, technology, and the strange experience of watching so much of what is happening around us through screens. But there is also more hope here than you might expect from Interpol.

Banks said they wanted to make this one count, and they have. This Mirror Weighs a Ton finds Interpol taking chances without losing what has always made them such a distinctive band. Nearly twenty-five years after Turn On the Bright Lights, they're still finding new places to take their music, and it's a great place to be.