Album Review: Interpol, The Other Side of Make Believe

On their seventh outing, Interpol - named after that most Big Brotherly of organisations – sound different.

While not a Coleridgean leap into rambling fells fortified on brandy and cake, there is a sense of the robot becoming somewhat sentient, à la Alex Garland’s Ex Machina. 

Or perhaps part of the machine turning sapient – ‘Gran Hotel’ and ‘Big Shot City’ certainly suggest parts of the Interpol whole cutting loose.

Still, let’s not get too carried away. The Other Side Of Make-Believe is not the shedding of skin entirely – this is still the band that created Antics and Turn On the Bright Lights. However, there now exists a fresh timbre in Paul Bank’s voice, a whiff of vulnerability, as evidenced on ‘Into The Night’. 

Elsewhere, ‘Fables’ – with its chatter of boarded-up houses, guileless angels meteors – and album opener ‘Toni (“Flame down Pacific highway/ Still in shape, my methods refined”) are cinematic in scope, albeit the Fritz Lang version. The accompanying video is well worth the watch, approaching as it does, a mash-up of Walter Hill’s 'The Warriors' and Michael Jackson’s 'Thriller'. 

Perhaps it is too simplistic to herald this as Interpol Mark II. But, as they repeatedly intone on the closing track – “Go easy, go easy” – an altered path is certainly being forged. 

Listen: ‘Toni’
7/10

Out now via Matador.

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