Interpol - This Mirror Weighs a Ton [CD]

Twenty-four years after Turn On The Bright Lights, Interpol still sound like nobody else, and This Mirror Weighs A Ton is the album where they stop apologising for it. Paul Banks, Daniel Kessler and Sam Fogarino have spent two decades being told they peaked in 2002. This record answers by leaning further into what made them distinctive rather than chasing anything current.

Kessler's guitar remains the band's signature instrument, all high, chiming intervals that outline chords rather than play them, and here it is given more space than on the last several albums. The title track opens things at a deliberate pace. "Iron City" and "Wings On Fire" are the most propulsive moments, and "So Rides The Reindeer" is the strangest, a title only this band would use with a completely straight face. Banks writes in his usual mode of oblique menace, images arriving without explanation and landing anyway.

Twelve songs, no filler, and a band that has settled comfortably into being exactly what it is. For anyone who came in with Antics or Our Love To Admire and drifted away, this is the record worth coming back for.

Compact disc edition on Partisan Records.