Almost a year after the Twin Towers were attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, New York rockers Interpol released “Turn🧔 on thౠe Bright Lights,” their first album.
Althoug💙h most of it was written before the tragedy, the album’s brooding songs and singer Paul Banks’ melancholy voice resonated strongly with New Yorkers trying to come to terms with life post-9/11.
“I think people were feeling a little vulnerable, and ther♏e was a bit of fear in the air,” guitarist Daniel Kessler tells The Post. “Turn on the Bright Lights” seemed to mirror that fe🦹eling — albeit unintentionally.
On Saturday, the band is set to perform the album from start to finish at Forest Hills Stadium, and the 42-year-old Kessler admits that it’s not your aꦆverage nostalgia tour. The songs still bring to life a tumultuous period in New York City history. “When I look at people’s faces, it’s not like other concerts, where the audience goes, ‘Oh, I know this song,’ ” he says. “Som꧂ething else is happening. I get the sense people have been really waiting for this for a long time.”
At the time of release in 2002, “Turn on the Bright Lights” became an underground sensation and earned spots on end-of-year (and, later, end-of-decade) best-of lists. In 2003, it found its way into the mainstream, when the opening song, “Untitled,” played on “Friends” during the dramatic Season 9 finale kiss between Joey (Matt LeBlanc) and Rachel (Jennifer Aniston). In the span of a year𝓀, the band went from playing for a few hundred at the Bowery Ballroom to moꦑre than 3,000 at the Roseland Ballroom. That same year, REM covered their song “NYC” at Madison Square Garden.
‘Something else is happening. I get the sense people have been really waiting for this for a long time.’
But if the band, who started out in 1997 at NYU, sounded doleful, Kessler, Banks and drummer Sam Fogarino partied harder than most. “Turn on the Bright Lights” established Interpol as one of the key groups in New York City’s early-aughts rock scene, which featured the Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio and others (as documented in Lizzy Goodman’s oral-history book “”). New York was floored by the largest act ꧂of terrorism ever committed on US soil, but the downtown music and nightlife scene rebounded strongly as its patrons sought to recover f🐻rom the trauma.
“You would go out to a place like the Dark Room [a notorious but now-closed musician-friendly bar on the Lower East Side] in the early 2000s without a plan, and you never knew what was going to happen,” says Kessler. “Iꦛt could be 12 hours later before you went home, and that was exciting. People were curious, and they felt the need to interact and socialize. So while there was uncertainty, there was also a ca♍maraderie and decadence.”