Interpol have talked NME through the writing, recording and lyrical inspiration behind each and every track on their new album ‘The Other Side Of Make-Believe‘. Watch our video interview with the band above.
Frontman Paul Banks and guitarist Daniel Kessler sat down with us during a recent trip to London to give us the lowdown on what they described as “probably their most intimate and hopeful-sounding record”.
With the album seeking to “underline the danceability of drummer Sam Fogarino’s rhythms and R&B influences” mixed with more uplifting moods and a wider emotional spectrum, the record was launched by the bright departure of lead single ‘Toni’.
“It was a great moment during one of the two writing sessions that we had in the Catskills in Upstate New York,” Kessler of the origins of ‘Toni’. “There was a piano in the living room, I started playing and Paul just jumped right in with the bass. Within a short amount of time, Sam was playing a very dance-y beat as per what’s on the record and it just felt like the foundation came together.
“It took a minute to shape it and have it go in different directions and have it figure out what it wanted to be, but in that moment there was a really good sense that this could be a fun song. [We knew] it could be a really dance-y and rhythmic jam.”
Speaking of the lyrics of the song, Banks told us: “I envisioned it as a little bit of a fever dream, epiphany, hallucination, sunny afternoon drive kind of song. We decided to launch the record with ‘Toni’ because [record label] Matador is a great partner and we take a lot of their input to heart.”
Banks added: “Our songs are all our babies, and I don’t ever really feel like one song has particular priority over the other ones, but I do feel like ‘Tony’ is a very inviting song and a good mission statement for this body of music where it’s piano-based – which is a fresh thing for us – but also danceable and with hopeful, optimistic and uplifting kind of lyrical quality. Sonically, it’s also a pretty positive track, so it’s just a good foot forward.”
In a four-star review of ‘The Other Side Of Make-Believe‘, NME concluded: “Far from a total reinvention, but all adds up to a confident, rewarding and subtly adventurous new chapter for Interpol – or, as Banks sings himself on the aforementioned peak of ‘Toni’, ‘Still in shape, my methods refined‘.”
‘The Other Side Of Make-Believe’ by Interpol is out now on Matador.