Interpol – The Other Side of Make Believe

If fate didn’t quite ordain the circumstances fo Interpol’s seventh 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 tarpit – doubly so, given the presence of towering producer-engineer duo Flood and Moulder on the boards. But lead vocalist, lyricist and guitarist Paul 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 isnecessary, and a still-believable emotion withinwhat makes Interpol Interpol.”