The Other Side of Make-Believe

Released July 15 2022

Once, New York City’s Interpol was thought of as the progenitor of the early-2000s post-punk revival, known for their ability to distill vintage sounds and morph them into nostalgic innovations. But a couple decades, endless world tours, and international success can change a few things. The Other Side of Make-Believe is singer/bassist Paul Banks, guitarist Daniel Kessler, and drummer Sam Fogarino’s seventh studio album (recorded with their longtime collaborator Alan Moulder, and their first time working with producer Flood), their first written remotely. It is also an evolution for the band, who made room to experiment with piano-forward songwriting (“Toni,” “Something Changed”); huge, layered drums (“Renegade Hearts”); mathy time signatures (“Into the Night”); and experimental bass (“Passenger”). It’s Interpol like you’ve never heard them before.

Thematically, the album—and its title—reflects the unstable status quo of modernity, its optimistic qualities and its detrimental ones. “I'm very fascinated with musing on the human imagination and our proclivity to come up with stories to make sense of reality,” Banks tells Apple Music. “On the one hand, that's beautiful, distinguishes us from other species, and allows all of fiction and film and art, this abstract thinking as a way to wrestle chaos into sense. But I feel like there’s something of a downside to it—self-delusion and self-deception that takes over with reality is too cold and frightening. The world we live in right now, there’s a lot of tension between what is true and what is false.”