Last week, Interpol premiered Toni, the first single from their new album ‘The Other Side Of Make-Believe’, released July 15 on Matador. The song was accompanied by the opening instalment of a two-part film directed by Van Alpert (Post Malone, Machine Gun Kelly), which quickly went to garner over a quarter of a million views on YouTube.
Today, Interpol release the second and concluding part, as well as unveiled the new song “Something Changed”. Paul Banks notes: “In “Something Changed,” part 2 of our short film with Van Alpert, reality and reverie converge and our two lead characters find themselves in a kind of dream state – being pursued inexorably by an ominous figure (played by myself.) The lives of the three are intertwined in a nebula of fear, retribution, desire, and defiance. Who will receive their just deserts? Stay tuned and find out”
Director Van Alpert: “Paul and I like the idea that Something Changed would be like a dream. It’s as if our two main characters wake up from what happened in Toni and their lives are irreparably different. They are now on the run from some dark force that is a bit more primal and encroaching.“
Watch the video for “Something Changed” BELOW:
“Still in shape, my methods refined,” sings Paul Banks on “Toni”, the opening track from Interpol’s 7th LP ‘The Other Side of Make-Believe’. The album breaks fresh ground for the group: parallel to exploring the sinister undercurrents of contemporary life, Interpol’s new songs are imbued with pastoral longing and newfound grace. Daniel Kessler’s serpentine guitar arrangements crest skywards, Samuel Fogarino shatters his percussive precision into strange metres, while Paul Banks’ sonorous voice exudes a vulnerability that is likely to catch most long-term fans of the band off guard. After all, says Banks, “there’s always a seventh time for a first impression.”
Interpol play the Roundhouse in London for two nights on June 14-15 and some of their biggest worldwide shows to date throughout the year, including the Rose Bowl Stadium in Los Angeles and City Palacio De Los Deportes arena in Mexico City.
‘The Other Side of Make-Believe’ began remotely across 2020. In early 2021, Interpol reconvened to flesh out new material at a rented home in the Catskills, before completing it later that year in North London, working for the first time with production veteran Flood (Mark Ellis), as well as teaming up again with former co-producer Alan Moulder.
Writing on their own in those geographically-dispersed early stages gave the members a way out of their respective heads: “We really extracted the honey out of this situation”, says Fogarino. Kessler echoes the sentiment: “Working alone was raw at first, but has opened up a vivid new chapter for us.” In the Interpol Venn Diagram, each member found a way of expanding their individual circle in perfect harmony.
As Banks was grounded in Edinburgh for close to nine months, he got cosy in a window-side chair with a pen, pad and atypically cream-coloured bass guitar. “We usually write live, but for the first time I’m not shouting over a drumkit,” he says. “Daniel and I have a strong enough chemistry that I could picture how my voice would complement the scratch demos he emailed over. Then I could turn the guys down on my laptop, locate these colourful melodies and generally get the message across in an understated fashion.” Banks adjusting his personal volume dimmer to a hush chimes with a period of global disquiet and the yearn for reconnection: “Flood told me the vocals on the demos evoked Mickey Rourke in Barfly, singing to a patron at the end of the tabletop, and we never felt the need to flip that smoky intimacy into something big and loud when it came to rehearse and record. I got a real kick out of doing the opposite.”
Coming from a group whose early material was characterised by Polish knife-wielders and incarcerated serial killers, you might expect Interpol’s take on the present day to be an emotional tar pit — perhaps doubly so, given the towering credentials of Flood and Moulder’s history with Nine Inch Nails, Curve, Gary Numan, Depeche Mode and more.
Yet Banks felt the call to push in a “counterbalancing” direction, with paeans to mental resilience and the quiet power of going easy. “The nobility of the human spirit is to rebound,” he says. “Yeah, I could focus on how fucked everything is, but I feel now is the time when being hopeful is necessary, and a still-believable emotion within what makes Interpol Interpol.” Kessler concurs: “The process of writing this record and searching for tender, resonant emotions took me back to teenage years; it was transformative, almost euphoric. I felt a rare sensation of purpose biting on the end of my fishing rod and I was compelled to reel it in.”
Even with spare piano caressing the intro of ‘Something Changed’, open-hearted cyclical chord progressions on ‘Passenger’, or anthemic waves of Kessler’s cresting guitar on ‘Big Shot City’, it doesn’t mean Interpol are entirely stopping to smell the roses, though. ‘The Other Side of Make-Believe’s title, cover and a frequent lyrical lean toward fables, smokescreens and the mutability of truth reflect Banks’ disgust with the curdling of the information age. “I feel like the slipperiness of reality, and being willing to get violent on the basis of a factual disagreement, has had a super strenuous effect on the psyche of everyone in the world. Although,” he laughs, “I was talking about it so often that it kind of spooked my bandmates, so I found a way to express my concerns more through the lens of human beings’ non-rational faculties, and less civilizational collapse.”
On The Other Side of Make-Believe, a deep interpersonal understanding means each member respects the other’s respective strengths better than ever, letting Interpol’s elemental qualities shine through. Song by song, Kessler sketches the architectural blueprint (invariably while watching a film — locus of inspiration for almost every song in the band’s catalogue), Banks frames artwork on the wall, then Fogarino arranges the furniture to have a certain positioning and intent.
Interpol: their methods refined, still in terrific shape.
– Gabriel Szatan
The Other Side Of Make-Believe
Tracklisting
1. Toni
2. Fables
3. Into The Night
4. Mr Credit
5. Something Changed
6. Renegade Hearts
7. Passenger
8. Greenwich
9. Gran Hotel
10. Big Shot City
11. Go Easy (Palermo)
INTERPOL TOUR DATES 2022:
Apr 25 Dallas TX, US The Factory in Deep Ellum
Apr 26 Austin TX, US Austin City Limits Live at The Moody Theater
Apr 28 Tempe AZ, US Marquee Theatre
Apr 29 San Diego CA, US Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre at SDSU
Apr 30 Berkeley CA, US Greek Theatre
May 2 Salt Lake City UT, US Union Event Center (The Union)
May 3 Denver CO, US Mission Ballroom
May 5 St. Paul MN, US Palace Theatre
May 6 Chicago IL, US Aragon Ballroom
May 7 Detroit MI, US The Fillmore
May 8 Cleveland OH, US Agora Theatre & Ballroom
May 10 Washington DC, US The Anthem
May 11 Boston MA, US Roadrunner
May 13 Philadelphia PA, US The Met Philadelphia
May 14 Brooklyn NY, US Kings Theatre
May 15 Brooklyn NY, US Kings Theatre
May 21 Pasadena CA, US Just Like Heaven Festival
May 28 Mexico City, MX Palacio de los Deportes
Jun 8 Barcelona ES, Sala Apolo
Jun 9 Barcelona, ES Primavera Sound Festival
Jun 11 Porto, PT Primavera Sound Festival
Jun 12 Berlin, GE Tempelhof Sounds Festival
Jun 14 London, UK The Roundhouse
Jun 15 London, UK The Roundhouse
Jun 16 Brussels, BE Ancienne Belgique (AB)
Jun 18 Paris, FR Salle Pleyel
Jun 19 Landgraaf, NE Pinkpop Festival
Aug 25 Asbury Park NJ, US Stone Pony Summer Stage
Aug 26 Toronto ON, CA Budweiser Stage
Aug 27 Portland ME, US Thompson’s Point
Aug 28 Providence RI, US Bold Point Pavilion
Aug 30 Columbus OH, US KEMBA Live! Outdoor
Sep 1 Cincinnati OH, US Andrew J. Brady Music Center
Sep 2 Atlanta GA, US The Eastern
Sep 3 Asheville NC, US Rabbit Rabbit
Sep 6 Pittsburgh PA, US Stage AE Outdoors
Sep 8 Indianapolis IN, US TCU Amphitheater at White River State Park
Sep 9 St Louis MO, US Stifel Theatre
Sep 10 Oklahoma City OK, US The Criterion
Sep 13 Las Vegas NV, US The Theater at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas
Sep 14 Paso Robles CA, US Vina Robles Amphitheatre
Sep 16 Seattle WA, US Paramount Theatre
Sep 17 Portland OR, US Pioneer Courthouse Square
Sep 18 Portland OR, US Pioneer Courthouse Square
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