Tthe follow-up to 2019’s A Fine Mess EP and 2018’s Marauder full-length, will come out on July 15 via Matador Records. Pre-order your copy here.
If fate didn’t quite ordain the circumstances for Interpol’s new album, it was at least fortunate that the band had happily concluded their Marauder cycle on stage in front of 30 thousand-odd Peruvian fans. Rather than be sent scrambling like so many other musicians on tour or promoting new music, when lockdown clamped in March 2020, Interpol quickly got into a productive mood.
Coming from a group whose early work was characterised by Polish knife-wielders and incarcerated serial killers, you might expect Interpol’s pandemic record to be an emotional tar pit — doubly so, given the presence of towering producer-engineer duo Flood and Moulder on the boards. But 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 recover and 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.”
Of the new single “Toni” video and working with director Van Alpert, Banks says: “It was a blast working with Van Alpert on the video for our song ‘Toni.’ We bonded over shared film inspiration as well as a passion for classic music videos by the likes of Glazer, Cunningham, and Jonze. Van, in my opinion, is in the club with these legends; and it’s exciting to watch him build his own enduring body of work.”
Alpert adds: “I wrote a crazy idea that I felt was new for Interpol, a hyper-modern, cinematic dance film. A ‘Lovers on the Run’ story, with a classic cliff-hanger ending. Dream job working for my all-time favorite band! Paul Banks ties everything together and elevated the concept, because he’s naturally a great actor, artist, and collaborator.”
Check out the album's tracklist and watch the video for "Toni" below.
The Other Side of Make-Believe Tracklist:
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)
