Interpol Reflects on ‘Expansive & Fresh’ New Album ‘This Mirror Weighs a Ton’ & Recording With New Band Members and Collaborators

This Mirror Weighs a Ton brought Interpol back home after almost a decade. The New York band created the new album at Wyatt Studio in Manhattan, which became the place where it expanded its music, incorporating strings, wind instruments, acoustic guitars, layered vocals, synthesizers and experimental sound design — all without losing the rhythmic precision that has always defined its sound.

“It was great to be back in New York City recording a record with our friend Andrew Wyatt, and I think we just came into this album with a lot of positivity and some new input,” frontman Paul Banks tells Billboard Español in a video call interview. “We had a new bass player, [Brad Truax], we had Andrew as the producer, and I think we really just got a new chemistry and created some exciting music.”

Released on digital platforms on Friday (August 28) via Partisan Records, the group’s first album with original songs in four years also marks a sonic and lyrical evolution that reaffirms Interpol’s position as one of the most important alternative rock bands of its generation. In this new project, Banks explains, Interpol tackles introspective and deeply self-reflective themes in songs like “See Out Loud” and “Iron City.”

“I think there’s a lot of themes on this record about reflection and being honest with one’s self,” he says. “And then I think there’s sort of the self-reflection that a band can go through, or the self-reflection that a nation can go through, and sort of evaluating who are we and, again, similarly, there can be a distorted reality via manipulative narratives, or there can be the honest look. And I think it’s just a very interesting thing the way that it’s very difficult to find universal truths in almost anything and that the world in this moment in time is sort of further than ever away from having kind of a sense of shared common reason.”

Comprising 12 songs, This Mirror Weighs a Ton follows the band’s 2022 album The Other Side of Make-Believe. In addition to the official integration of Truax and the production by Wyatt — known for his work with artists like Rosalía and Charli XCX — the set was mixed by David Fridmann, a collaborator of MGMT and Sleater-Kinney.

“Brad wrote bass lines on this record for the first time, and played the bass lines,” details Banks. “Usually he was just our live bassist, playing either what Carlos Dengler wrote or what I wrote on bass, but now he wrote the bass parts — so that was like having a new contributing member.”

He adds that Wyatt composed much of the string arrangements and other orchestrations heard on the album. “I think, altogether, it just feels like a really well realized and expansive and fresh Interpol record.”

Regarding a tour to promote the band’s new album, Banks reveals that an announcement will be made soon, and confirms that Latin America will definitely be included. The singer lived and studied in Mexico when he was 17, which partly explains why he considers the country “his second home,” as he told Billboard Español in 2024, hours before Interpol’s performance at Mexico City’s Zócalo, which became the most massive show of the band’s career to date.

After moving to New York to attend college, he returned to Mexico City in 2005 as a rock star and performed one of the most memorable concerts of his career. He recounts that night at the Salón Mexica in the city’s World Trade Center, where he felt the “terrifying” beauty of the Mexican audience as the venue nearly collapsed due to the sheer number of people gathered (around 7,000, according to promoter Iguapop).

“We definitely have some plans to do shows in Mexico,” says Banks, who speaks perfect Spanish and alternates between full sentences in Spanish and English during the interview. “I’m not sure which ones have and haven’t been announced, but we are definitely gonna be down there soon, I believe, and very excited to do so. Mexico is one of the best audiences for us in the world, and we just have such an amazing time in all of Latin America.”