Interpol play ‘Turn On The Bright Lights’ in full at Outside Lands to mark 21st anniversary

Interpol Paul Banks

Interpol performed their debut album ‘Turn On The Bright Lights’ in full at San Francisco’s Outside Lands last week (August 11) to celebrate its 21st anniversary.

The record was released in the UK on August 19, 2002, and on the following day in the US, and featured tracks like ‘NYC’, ‘PDA’ and ‘Obstacle 1’.

The band played the album in full and in order of its tracklist as they appeared at the Californian festival on Friday, performing on the Sutro stage.

In addition to all of ‘Turn The Bright Lights’, they also included two special bonus tracks in ‘Specialist’ – taken from their 2010 self-titled album – and ‘Evil’, which featured on Interpol’s second album, ‘Antics’. According to setlist.fm, the 2004 single ‘Slow Hands’ was also printed on the setlist, but not was not played.

Watch footage of the performance and see the setlist in full below.

Interpol played:

‘Untitled’
‘Obstacle 1’
‘NYC’
‘PDA’
‘Say Hello To The Angels’
‘Hands Away’
‘Obstacle 2’
‘Stella Was A Diver And She Was Always Down’
‘Roland’
‘The New’
‘Leif Erikson’
‘Specialist’
‘Evil’

In July, Interpol also played ‘Antics’ in full at a special gig in Paris, months ahead of the 19th anniversary of that album. The show took place at the Philharmonie de Paris and saw the band air ‘A Time To Be So Small’ for the first time since 2007.

After playing all of the album’s tracks, the band returned to the stage for a second set featuring eight songs from across their career.

Speaking to NME in 2019, frontman Paul Banks said he “like[d] the idea” of the band hitting the road in 2024 for a special 20th-anniversary tour celebrating ‘Antics’. “I feel like there was a moment of reticence when we talked about [touring to celebrate debut album] ‘Turn On The Bright Lights’, which was ameliorated or abated by the fact that we were deep into a new release and facing forward with new work [with 2018’s ‘Marauder’],” he said. “I needed that in order to be able to look back and celebrate and older record.

“Since that, a lot of fans have told us that it was fun as shit. To see a band go back and play a whole record from top to bottom, I like it. I don’t know if there’s any thought about doing that for ‘Antics’, but I’m not categorically opposed. I find those kind of shows to just be fun celebrations.”

Recently, Interpol have invited numerous musicians to rework songs from their latest album ‘The Other Side Of Make Believe’ as part of their ‘Interpolations’ project. Daniel Avery, Makaya McCraven, Jeff Parker, Jesu and Water From Your Eyes have all taken part, reimagining various songs from the album.

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