“As you grow as a composer and as a musician, you learn to say more with less”

“This Mirror Weighs A Ton” (Partisan, 26) is already the eighth studio album in the locker Interpol. An album in which the North American band focuses on its qualities, but also takes the opportunity to show off certain specific, somewhat unprecedented features.

It is a hot morning on a random Thursday in the month of July in Madrid. Nothing notable, if it weren’t for the fact that we have met Daniel Kessler – guitarist and co-composer of Interpol.– in a central hotel in the city with the intention of chatting about “This Mirror Weighs A Ton” the new album by the New York band. Kessler looks slim and elegant, he is a good-looking guy who, already sitting on the hotel terrace, takes off his Ray-Bans and exhibits a kindness and exquisite manners that enhance that magnetism that he also shows off when he plays the guitar live. After some informal chat, a twenty-minute conversation begins to focus on the qualities of Interpol’s eighth studio album, starting with the differences with respect to the combo’s previous discography. “It involves a progression and it’s definitely a different chapter, in this case without many conversations about it; it has happened without talking about concepts. We evolve as collaborators and our chemistry is very strong when we write music… and that keeps us moving forward. Andrew Wyatt as, as a producer, bought a lot of different sounds to add to the equation and also helped make the sound more expansive and different”. It could also be considered that, at least at times, this album is more minimalist and introspective than previous releases. “You just think about what you would want to convey. For this album, I wrote more on the piano than on the guitar. I think it’s because, as you grow as a songwriter and as a musician, maybe you learn to say more with less. I think in general I’m a minimalist, I like ‘less is more’. Even from our first album.”

“Things can change quickly and there are so many bands that come and go…”

In any case, “This Mirror Weighs A Ton” transmits specific feelings of melancholy, sadness or despair. “When you create things with that kind of indulgence, they make me feel better as a human being. So maybe it’s something that comes out of me: an emotion that makes me feel comfortable and that you feel that someone understands you. There is some hope there, because you know that there are people who feel something similar to you and you feel less alone. I feel that Interpol is an emotional band. Our songs have a very strong sense of emotion and conviction.”. It is also a beautiful and exciting album, which highlights the contrast between beauty and that melancholy so common in the music of Interpol to which we have been referring. “They are things inherent to our band, but we have found new ways to express them. On this album we have more keyboards and orchestrations, and that helps highlight both parts. I think the stimulus is established in the basic composition of the song, but then there are different ways of articulating those emotions. And I think we did a good job when it came to extracting the beauty. I see it as less melancholic and more beautiful.”. The lyrical part corresponds, as usual, to Paul Banks, although Kessler dares to partially contextualize the matter. “He’s a wonderful lyricist. I don’t know if I can express exactly what he was singing about, but obviously there’s something about the state of the world and its uncertainty and the technological precipice that we’re on right now. I think it’s a record that really captures this moment in time that we’re in from a number of different angles, lyrically and vocally, and I think you can feel that in some of the lyrics.”

It’s been a while since Interpol They are a band very consolidated in their success, but the interviewee puts the matter into perspective and does not lose the perspective of a sector/business that tends to be capricious. “We were already a band five years before anyone had signed us and we were able to make an album. And then we started touring. It was my dream. So anything that happened after that is incredible and unexpected for me. Especially because people weren’t interested in us in those first five years. How could I think I was going to be here in Madrid talking about our eighth album? I’d be crazy if I thought that. Even when everything was getting bigger with the first album, “Turn On The Bright Lights” (02), you never know what’s going to happen. Things can change quickly and there are so many bands that come and go… I’m very aware that this could stop one day. You get older or the inspiration runs out.

A few hours after this interview takes place, Interpol They would offer an intense concert at Madrid’s Sala But under the pseudonym Iron City, before performing the next day at a major festival like Mad Cool. “I like playing in venues and also at festivals. When you play in small venues, it’s very intimate and sometimes I get more nervous. You can see people’s faces. ‘Why is that guy going to order a beer? Doesn’t he like the song?’ (Laughs). The best concerts are the ones where your brain doesn’t think about anything. You just enjoy the moment. I hope we never settle. People who come to your concerts don’t want to see you be a tired musician. And I don’t want to feel like a mere worker.”