Interpol news

Interpol’s seventh album 'The Other Side of Make-Believe' will be released on July 15 via Matador.

First single “Toni” is the first installment of a two-part dance film directed by Van Alpert (Post Malone, Machine Gun Kelly), with the second chapter to follow soon. Speaking on the collaboration, singer Paul Banks notes, “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.”

Video director Van Alpert says: “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.”

'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 Sam Fogarino. Daniel 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-colored bass guitar. “We usually write live, but for the first time I’m not shouting over a drum kit,” 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 colorful 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 characterized 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 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.”

'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.”

Sam Fogarino says Flood’s part in the album equation “was to hyperbolize all of our good qualities. Our band has never exploited rock ‘n roll tropes, no big drum fills or wailing solos, so he located the core honesty in our sound and found a way to widen it. There’s a phrase I love about drumming: ‘the rhythm hates the melody’ — the best kind of drumming either totally accentuates what’s being conveyed, or ploughs through it.” So what does the splashy, dramatic beat on songs like "Renegade Hearts" and "Gran Hotel" imply? The answer comes back with a grin: “I guess Flood gave me room to plough.”

Track list:

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)

Tour dates:

5/7 – Detroit, MI @ The Fillmore Detroit*
5/8 – Cleveland, OH @ Agora Theatre*
5/10 – Washington, DC @ The Anthem*
5/11 – Boston, MA @ Roadrunner*
5/13 – Philadelphia, PA @ The Met Philadelphia*
5/14 – Brooklyn, NY @ Kings Theatre* SOLD OUT
5/15 – Brooklyn, NY @ Kings Theatre*
5/21 – Los Angeles, CA @ Rose Bowl, Pasadena – Just Like Heaven***
5/28 – Mexico City, MEX @ Palacio De Los Deportes****
6/8 – Barcelona, Spain @ Sala Apolo
6/9 – Barcelona, Spain @ Primavera Sound
6/11 – Porto, Portugal @ Primavera Sound
6/12 – Berlin, Germany @ Templehof Sounds Festival
6/14 – London, UK @ The Roundhouse SOLD OUT
6/15 – London, UK @ The Roundhouse
6/16 – Brussels, Belgium @ Ancienne Belgique SOLD OUT
6/18 – Paris, France @ Salle Pleyel SOLD OUT
6/19 – Landgraaf, Netherlands @ Pinkpop Festival
8/25 – Asbury Park, NJ @ Stone Pony Summer Stage ^
8/26 – Toronto, ON @ Budweiser Stage #
8/27 ­– Portland, ME @ Thompson’s Point ^
8/28 – Providence, RI @ Bold Point Pavilion ^
8/30 – Columbus, OH @ KEMBA Live! Outdoor ^
9/1 ­­– Cincinnati, OH @ Andrew J. Brady Music Center ^
9/2 – Atlanta, GA @ The Eastern %
9/3 – Asheville, NC @ Rabbit Rabbit ^
9/6 ­– Pittsburgh, PA @ Stage AE Outdoors ^
9/8 ­– Indianapolis, IN @ TCU Amphitheater at White River Park ^
9/9 ­– St. Louis, MO @ Stifel Theatre ^
9/10 – Oklahoma City, OK @ The Criterion ^
9/13 – Las Vegas, NV @ The Theater at ^ Virgin Hotels Las Vegas ^
9/14 – Paso Robles, CA @ Vina Robles Amphitheatre ^
9/16 – Seattle, WA @ Paramount Theatre ^
9/17 – Portland, OR @ Pioneer Courthouse Square ^
9/18 – Portland, OR @ Pioneer Courthouse Square ^
*plus TYCHO and Matthew Dear
** Matthew Dear
***plus The Shins, Modest Mouse, M.I.A and more
****plus Dry Cleaning
^ Spoon + The Goon Sax
# Metric, Interpol, Spoon