The Maniac In Your Head

Interpol “This Mirror Weighs A Ton”

Interpol is a band that works within very narrow aesthetic constraints, so the most exciting thing they can do 25 years into their career is move to the outer boundaries of their style. “This Mirror Weighs A Ton” is as far out as they’ve ever ventured from their agitated, tightly-wound default sound, but even when they lean this much on soothing atmosphere and gentle rhythm, the music is still immediately identifiable as Interpol. The vibe may be different but the palette remains dark and high contrast, and shift towards more open space in the music places greater emphasis on Paul Banks’ distinctive nasal vocal tone. But even that is softer here, and the peevish quality that comes up in a lot of Interpol songs is swapped out for something that sounds like compassion without warmth.

If anything about Interpol is immutable, it’s apparently the peculiar syntax of Banks’ lyrics: “This mirror weighs a ton but at least we act sudden / all the words are gone / but the radios in your head still speak the arcane to the out there.” I’ve spent enough time with Interpol to find this very charming. Banks’ imagery and turns of phrase are evocative, and I feel like I get what he’s laying out even if the lines get sketchy. And frankly, I’ll take strange words that flow with a melody over grammatically sound and over-written phrases stuffed awkwardly into a meter any day of the week.

Buy it from Bandcamp.