{"id":874313,"date":"2026-08-28T08:06:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T08:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/874313\/"},"modified":"2026-08-28T08:06:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T08:06:09","slug":"interpol-this-mirror-weighs-a-ton-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/874313\/","title":{"rendered":"Interpol: This Mirror Weighs a Ton Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every four years, with the reliability of a reelection campaign, Interpol<\/a> emerge with a new album that sounds remarkably like Interpol. They\u2019re not the kind of band to wade through a murky psychedelia morass for an album-length fuck-you to casual fans, \u00e0 la MGMT<\/a>, or douse a long-awaited comeback LP in chintzy pop textures and copious Auto-Tune, like the Strokes just did<\/a>. When Interpol make a record, they\u2019re all business, and their business is being Interpol, brooding hooks and well-pressed suits and all. They may tweak the formula\u2014the post-punk atmospherics, the alluringly charismatic baritone belonging to Paul Banks, the cryptic lyrics that connote dark emotions but are agile enough to be repurposed for goth tattoos or goofy<\/a> memes<\/a>. But they don\u2019t toss it away.<\/p>\n

That reliability means you can count on them for consistency\u2014aside from the dismal self-titled record<\/a>, they\u2019ve never made a bad one\u2014but also means it can be tough to differentiate one post-Carlos Interpol album from another. Let\u2019s see: There was the course-correction comeback<\/a> that reintroduced Interpol as a three-piece, with Banks on bass. There was the surprisingly raw Dave Fridmann production<\/a> that yielded some strong<\/a> singles<\/a> as the band settled into legacy status. There was the remotely written one<\/a> that, uh, also had a bunch of Interpol songs on it. Now, after hunkering down with another new collaborator (prolific pop producer Andrew Wyatt, not to be confused with rock-dinosaur whisperer Andrew Watt<\/a>) in their semi-estranged hometown of New York, Interpol return with another scheduled reset.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

By all early signs, This Mirror Weighs a Ton promised a rebirth. It\u2019s Interpol\u2019s first album for Partisan, the thriving indie label that has lately attracted high-profile talent like Beth Orton<\/a> and PJ Harvey<\/a>. It\u2019s their first to feature longtime touring bassist Brad Truax, now promoted to an official member. Early press included intriguing mentions<\/a> of strings, woodwinds, and \u201cexperimental sound design\u201d introduced by Wyatt. And its title track, released as a single<\/a>, was surely the band\u2019s most interesting song in more than a decade: Grainy and haunted, full of wobbly drum loops and gaseous synth clouds, it has a minimalist momentum and a command of empty space that gives Banks\u2019 dour voice newfound authority. He sounds like a man brooding alone, coming unmoored: \u201cAll the kings are gone,\u201d he sings, in between the celestial sighs delivered by his wife, fashion designer Juliet Seger-Banks, \u201cbut the maniac in your head still sleeps in archways.\u201d<\/p>\n

The track reconfigures Interpol as a kind of warped-pop studio project, and it sounded like an exciting glimmer of something new, but it\u2019s more of a red herring than a representative sample. With the exception of \u201cEnemy,\u201d a spectral piano ballad with clipped, thundering percussion that emulates the turbulent relationship it sketches, and the pulsing, orchestral outro on \u201cBird and the Serpent,\u201d nothing on This Mirror Weighs a Ton really matches the title track\u2019s thrill and invention. It\u2019s far from a weak record; it is, in fact, one of Interpol\u2019s better late-career efforts. Twitchy, paranoid rockers like \u201cSee Out Loud\u201d and \u201cWings on Fire\u201d can stand with the best tracks from El Pintor<\/a> or The Other Side of Make-Believe<\/a>. But the most novel thing about them is that guitarist Daniel Kessler, whose trebly riffs have been an Interpol trademark since the opening swells of \u201cUntitled,\u201d gets a fleeting turn at lead vocals during the former.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every four years, with the reliability of a reelection campaign, Interpol emerge with a new album that sounds…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":874314,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[342,49,48,75,341,343],"class_list":["post-874313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-albums","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=874313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/874314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}