Big Noble – It’s Later Than You Think
It’s ten years since Interpol guitarist Daniel Kessler and sound designer Joseph Fraioli last made a record as Big Noble – their 2015 debut First Light. Now a decade on, they have returned with an esoteric follow-up, It’s Later Than You Think.
Kessler has described the album as an attempt to create a “soundtrack to the listener’s own personal movie”, and as a result, it’s a record that at times sounds like the score to an arthouse flick. It’s certainly a world away from some of Interpol’s emotional, thumping indie epics, although you can detect their shared musical parentage.
Notably, third track All the Marbles sounds like Interpol stripped bare of the conventions required to bag a hit or create an alternative. It’s enjoyable for being so – like the opposite of hearing an a cappella cover, in having thumping drums and Kessler’s wailing guitar riffs, but without a vocal crescendo.
It’s preceded by an introductory two tunes that set out the album’s stall as being something to let wash over you, the title track and The Palms. After All the Marbles, En Camino continues in the same vein, before the hypnotic No Sharing In Tech House marries the two moods of ambience and Kessler’s brooding musical sensibilities.
Fraioli’s presence is felt throughout – turning his creative partner’s ideas into lush soundscapes – but is particularly felt on the early second half of the album, on the likes of the swirling Marine Layer. It comes soothingly after the rockier, more jarring Spinnaker, which rather sums up It’s Later Than You Think’s dual nature of spiky, emotional indie meeting an experimental movie soundtrack.
The album closes with two remixes of its earlier tracks, reworkings of All the Marbles and No Sharing in the Tech House that one might find on a more traditional record. The former, involving TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe and his musical partner Wilder Zoby, applies vocals and listens like the song has had an additional final stage of production. The latter, a remix from The Strokes’ Fabrizio Moretti and his brother Leo, feels an artistic final flourish.
It’s Later Than You Think won’t be everyone’s cup of tea – it’s certainly a departure if you’re used to belting out Interpol classics like Slow Hands and Evil. However, it completely achieves what Kessler and Fraioli set out to do in terms of creating a record that could play out as the soundtrack to a fan’s wandering thoughts as they get through another day – and that’s all you can ask.
Mark Worgan
Image: Jonathan Baker
It’s Later Than You Think is released on 15th August 2025. For further information or to order the album, visit Big Noble’s website here.
Watch the video for All the Marbles here:
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