Interpol “The Other Side of Make-Believe”
They were “just guys.” Back in 2002, they looked like us -- like guys we went to college with. Guys we worked with. Because, in fact, they were those guys. They went to NYU or Columbia and they worked at startups and media companies and ad agencies. The National and The Walkmen looked like every guy at every slightly elevated house party I ever attended during the years after college. The Hold Steady appeared slightly older and more interested in beer than wine — but still. There was a whole class of these guys. Some were featured prominently in “Meet Me in the Bathroom,” while most others were just footnotes. We lived in the same city, walked the same Brooklyn and LES streets and drank at the same bars. They were were more musically inclined. They woke up later than we did. But, otherwise, we were more alike than not.
The Strokes, however, were different. They didn’t look like guys with day jobs. They didn’t even really look like guys who existed during daytime hours. Back in 1999, I was a wide-eyed, but still kind of snotty, twenty-four year old, running a fledgling online record store and a barely existent indie label. Late one night and through circumstances I can barely remember, my business partner, Ari, and I were joined by Jimmy, who played in a band that we wanted to sign. Jimmy, in turn, brought his friend, Fabrizio. Either Jimmy or Fabrizio -- honestly I can’t recall who it was -- had a VHS called “The Blair Witch Project” that was described to us as both actual found footage and possibly a feature film. At the time, there was no movie called “The Blair Witch Project” playing in theaters. All we had was this bootleg tape. And so, needless to say, we were all intensely curious. We popped the tape in and watched all eighty one minutes in complete silence. I’d obviously never seen anything like it. Afterwards, we barely spoke. Honestly, I was kind of terrified. I left -- thoughts still swirling -- and headed home.
The next day, when I arrived at work, I approached Ari to discuss the most unusual aspect of the previous evening, which was not, in fact, “The Blair Witch Project.” That was the second most unusual thing. “What’s the deal with Fabrizio?” I asked. “Is he really the guy from that band?” Fabrizio Moretti was the number one, most unusual part of the night before. He was more handsome, more international, more laid back, cooler and somehow both more earnest and more sophisticated than any guy I knew. But, even then -- before he was even nominally famous -- I recognized him as the drummer from that band that would pass out flyers on the corner of Houston and Avenue A. He was not like the guys from the other bands. He wasn’t “just a guy.” Like the rest of his soon-to-be-famous bandmates, he was different.
From their very beginning, Interpol seemed closer to The Strokes than the other guys. Two years removed from my “Blair Witch” experience, The Strokes were superstars and Interpol were the guys hanging out on the corner of Houston and Avenue A. Because of my job and because they were without a record label, members of Interpol would come by my office every couple of weeks with copies of their “Precipitate” EP. Sometimes it was Carlos. Sometimes it was Daniel. In 2001, I must have seen them play live a dozen times and seen them around the office another ten times. But I never spoke a word to any of them. Despite the fact that I’d see them out about town, and despite the fact that I knew they’d gone to NYU, they really didn’t seem like the other guys.
Whereas every other New York City band, including The Strokes, balanced some collegiate pretense with over-served dude-ness, Interpol appeared to be all pretense. The suits. The black on black. The Factory Records of it all. Even before I heard a single note of their music, I was confused as to whether they were a satirical concept, or postmodern commentary, or totally earnest, or just something that I’d never seen before. Eventually, I decided that the Carlos and Daniel who dropped off records to our office at noon, were, in fact, identical to the ones who were on stage at Mercury Lounge. They were not wearing costumes. Those were not uniforms. They were skins.
Nevertheless, every part of me wanted to call bullshit on Interpol. I wasn’t being willfully stubborn. I’d seen them play. I’d heard their EPs. “PDA” was a helluva song. But it all seemed so contrived. More than derivative, it just seemed like it was make believe. Interpol wasn’t a “real” band, I thought. They weren’t “real” guys. I mean, of course Paul, Daniel, Carlos and Sam were real guys. But surely, in the band, they were just acting -- playing parts. I figured that Carlos was “Carlos D.” like “Justine D.” and “Todd P.” I assumed that, like those two, one lettered, last-named scions of NYC nightlife, he and his band were just savvy promoters.
Twenty years ago, I was certain that the trickery would be revealed and that a backlash would follow. Even when “Turn on the Bright Lights” was released and it was so familiar, but also so startling and brilliant. Even though that run from “Obstacle 1” into “NYC” into “PDA” was the best thirteen minutes of music I’d heard in a long time. Even when that album sold massively. Even when Pitchfork and every music blog got on board. And even when Spin and Rolling Stone and NME and everyone else followed. Even when I was rooting for them, knowing that they had achieved some greatness and were deserving of the success and the accolades. Even then, part of me was ready for someone to call bullshit.
It wasn’t that I wanted them to fail or that I thought a backlash was deserved. It was more that I thought it was inevitable. Along with many of us who’d first seen and heard them around New York City, I was waiting for the other black leather boot to drop. But then came “Antics,” which was, if anything, more confident than their debut. And then came massive, international success. Then came the world tours where they filled arenas and headlined festivals. Then came a string of uniformly good and slightly different, but, ultimately, not life-changing albums. There was their major label debut, “Our Love to Admire,” which marked the end of Carlos’ tenure. There was the meh self-titled album. There was their return to Matador and their semi-return to form on “El Pintor.” There were Paul Banks’ Hip Hop projects and Daniel Kessler’s Big Noble. There was the decidedly non-digital album they made with Dave Fridmann. A lot of time passed. Some things changed. And while Interpol was always “a show,” it was never “an act.”
That being said, fifteen years after I’d first heard them, there was a sense that they would never achieve what they had way back when. But, also, that they never really bottomed out. They never sucked. Interpol were slow but steady. Their worst records were never bad. There were always those one or two songs per album that would remind you what they were capable of. They always had style. And vibe. And, most importantly, dynamic. For two decades the backlash to Interpol was just a backlash in waiting.
But, then came “The Other Side of Make-Believe.” Interpol’s seventh studio album featured most of the style but very little of the vibe and dynamic we’d come to depend on the band for. Written and recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic and produced by Flood and mixed by Alan Moulder, it serves less as evidence of the band’s demise and more a symptom of the separation and alienation that defined 2021. Whatever one might think of Interpol, they always looked and sounded like a unit. Even after Carlos left the group, they sounded like a group of men working together. “The Other Side of Make-Believe” does not.
While all of their previous albums sound like the work of a unit, “TOSOMB” is more a kit of parts, expertly assembled, but overmatched by circumstance. The germs of the record began with Paul, Daniel and Sam in different countries, waylaid by a global pandemic. Beyond the geographic distance, though, the music suggests a formal, creative distance. This is not to imply that the band is or was in any way fracturing. I’ve absolutely no evidence of that. It’s more to confirm what Interpol themselves have shared: Paul was interested in making a more intimate, hopeful record. Daniel was writing highly complex guitar leads and progressions. And Sam was obsessing over classic, Motown beats. And though Flood and Alan Moulder do their darndest to stitch things together with beats and smoke and mirrors, it’s rarely enough to overcome the album’s original sin: distance.
There are many cliches about Rock bands in middle-age. One, of course, is that the members grow up and grow apart, marrying and having children and pursuing independent interests. In this narrative, middle-aged groups inevitably lose the alchemy that they developed over the years, living in close quarters, sharing vans and hotel rooms. And so, when they do reconvene in the studio, while they may be more practiced or efficient, that magic of connection -- the force that once unified them -- becomes harder to conjure.
Another cliche is that, after the mid-life crisis fades, men of a certain age tire of pretense and crave self-knowledge and self-acceptance. They see a shrink. They meditate. They let their underbelly hang out a little. On the surface, both of these cliches could be projected onto 2022 Interpol. The trio was literally separated by extraordinary distance for an inordinate amount of time. Their lives naturally diverged. And, to hear Paul Banks describe it, the band was looking to pull up the shades and allow for greater intimacy on their seventh record. Tell-tale signs of a band in mid-life crisis are right there in the press release for “The Other Side of Make-Believe.” But, ultimately, I have no good reason to believe that it was age that doomed the record. “The Other Side of Make-Believe” suffers because its foundational ideas -- more piano, more Math, more nakedness, more Motown and more Motown -- are patently hard to reconcile.
After sharing digital files across oceans for some time, most of “TOSOMB” was rehearsed as a band for two weeks in The Catskills, late 2021, and then recorded in London over the course of three more weeks. And though I don’t put a lot of stock in album title analysis, this one does seem telling. On the one hand, “The Other Side of Make-Believe” could relate to the surreality of coming back together and recording after the first waves of COVID had hit and passed. It could also imply the relinquishing of youthful ideals. By the time of the album’s release, the band’s popularity was in slow decline and every member of the group was firmly into middle-age. Or, finally, it could be a comment on the artifice of the band — that beneath the tailored clothing and make-up and the Factory — this is what they actually sound like.
Whether any of those reads are “correct,” they all seem to be relevant. “The Other Side of Make-Believe” is undeniably different from all other Interpol albums. The piano is more prominent. The chords and time signatures are at times obtuse. And Paul’s voice is rangier and less adorned than before. In truth, he doesn’t sound like Ian Curtis at all. He doesn’t sound like Leonard Cohen or Matt Berninger. He sounds like a guy named Paul who is really tired but still trying to stay present.
On “Toni,” the album’s opening track, we get our first glimpse of the “new Paul Banks.” His voice is less weighty, more elastic. Daniel plays piano in front of a band that has never sounded so tender. Though they are still decked out in all black and shades in the middle of the day, they are miles from “Turn on the Bright Lights.” Paul has described “Toni” as “hopeful.” I’m not sure I hear that so much as I hear a singer exhausted from affect and open to the alternative. It’s a lovely song, but by no means an elite Interpol song. Frankly, it’s not far from a middle of the road track by The Walkmen, which -- to be clear -- is not at all a bad thing.
The piano, an instrument which Interpol are not exactly known for, returns on “Something Changed.” Unlike “Toni,” wherein it’s used to communicate hope, it’s tuned down here to suggest distress. Because it’s something of a novelty and because the players involved are so skilled, the song succeeds in creating atmosphere — the mood lands somewhere between Black Heart Procession and The National. But, Interpol’s greatness was always more than their moodiness. “Something Changed” ultimately suffers because it is not gothic enough. Paul is mixed back, sounding tired when he should sound heavy and convincing. The result dulls the effect of the singer’s otherwise affecting lyrics:
I waded through shame for this
Are you there?
Everyday I'd see if chance was calling
Are you there?
I got a numb skull
I got a green heart
Something changed, we're out gunning
We all suffer the same faiths
We're in the sun, like nothing
All waging the good fight
Something changed, I'm stuck here, so defensive
Throughout “The Other Side of Make-Believe,” Daniel’s mathematical leads require Sam to navigate exacting time signatures. The sum of Math Rock plus Motown is not so disjointed as one would fear -- Interpol’s restraint and song craft mostly survives. But it’s a challenge nonetheless. Similarly, you can hear Paul struggling to fit his idea for a vocal or a bass line with the new polygons that Daniel is playing with. “Passenger,” for instance, has a sharp, ringing guitar lead that overwhelms the singer, who, in trying to evoke humility or humanity, just ends up sounding tired. In interviews, Paul acknowledged that the song was something of a “cut and paste job” and, sadly, you can kind of hear it.
“Greenwich” is different, but also kind of the same. The guitar is dissonant -- abrasive, climbing up and down on staircases at odd angles. But Paul’s vocals are uneasy -- hushed and in a slightly higher register than we’re accustomed to. Daniel likened his playing to something that The Pixies or Nirvana would do. But, this is absolutely not a “loud quiet loud” song, nor is there any melodic relief. It’s much more Post-Hardcore than it is Alt Rock. And I dig Post-Hardcore. But this feels accidentally -- or tentatively -- Post-Hardcore. And I never thought of Interpol as “accidental” or “tentative.”
The new formula undermines the cogency that was a calling card for the band. In the end, they trade a consistency that bordered on uniformity for something that is much harder to digest. Simultaneously, they attempt a daring trick -- to lower the stakes while upping the complexity. The results sound a good deal like The Walkmen, if they were fronted by Matt Berninger’s first cousin, who was really into Slint and June of 44. There are precious few moments to sing along with and fewer still when you want to tap your feet or move your body. Whatever “vibe” Interpol and Flood was aiming for struggled to locate the “vibration.” But, because they are Interpol, you cannot help but want to listen.
Occasionally, the experiments pay off. Kind of. Compared to most of the album, “Fables” is immediate. The guitar rings out. Paul’s newfound tenderness works. And the chorus is absolutely lovely. There’s a clattering beauty about it that is different from the Interpol that we knew before. And, when all else fails, they still have the knack for a dark Rock song with an amped up 4/4 beat and a audibly anxious, possibly disaffected, lead singer. They return to that sound for “Renegade Hearts,” wherein they remind us why we fell in love with Interpol to begin with and why Franz Ferdinand could not have existed without them. It’s positively thrilling to hear Paul Banks croon, “Roll up the window/You might get stolen.”
It would be convenient -- and probably lazy -- for me to suggest that “The Other Side of Make-Believe” is the album that justifies the backlash-in-waiting. That twenty years ago we knew it was all an act -- a pretentious copy and paste job -- which would be revealed over time. It is true that things tend to regress to a mean. People do stumble. And broken clocks are right twice a day. But, ultimately, I don’t think Interpol’s seventh album is evidence of anything other than a slightly failed experiment. Like so many great artists before them, they were highly derivative. But they’ve also been a great band from the start. And, in spite of their inordinate fame, and in spite of Pitchfork’s disappointment, and in spite of Carlos’ departure, they are still a great band. We’re well past the point of backlashes. Interpol has nothing to prove. They still put on the sharp, black slacks, shirts and sunglasses. They still look expensive and sound studied. They’re still buddies. They’re still, just guys. Apparently, they always were.