New Pornographers bang on with album and tour
The formation of a musical super group never fails to make headlines, but immediate critical acclaim and continuing success are not things that tend to follow. Vancouver’s proud exceptions, The New Pornographers, released their sixth studio album, Brill Bruisers, in late August, resulting in the group’s first top-15 position on the Billboard charts.
Man in charge · A.C. Newman, the band’s frontman, has final say on which songs finally make the record. The other bandmates provide input, but Newman emphasizes that he retains the power to make final decisions. – Photo courtesy of The New Pornographers
Largely responsible for the band’s eminence is frontman A.C. Newman, the director for the group both in the studio and on the stage. This time around, he wanted to ensure that all the songs on the record were suitable to be performed in front of a live audience and mixed in with a healthy amount of older material.
“With most of our records there’s at least a few songs we just can’t play live. But we changed that. Now everything gets played live,” Newman said. “You want to mix up old songs and new songs. So for me it’s a little complicated, and it’s this math problem I have to figure out. And I just try to figure out how to play at least a couple songs from every record.”
Incorporating songs from the group’s whole discography is no compromise for the fans; Blender included The New Pornographers’ debut, Mass Romantic, among its top 25 best Indie-Rock albums of all time, and Rolling Stone ranked the band’s second album, Electric Version, among the top 80 best albums of the 2000s.
Newman said that the new album is the best work he’s completed so far, and luckily, the sessions for Brill Bruisers produced plenty of material. What is next for the frames of songs that didn’t make the cut, however, is undecided.
“If I don’t think a song is working, I’ll listen to it and think, ‘This part is great; I’ll keep this part and toss the rest,’” he said. “There’s not really any method to it. I try not to worry too much about the songs that don’t get finished. I feel like if they’re good enough, they’ll see the light of day eventually.”
Members Dan Bejar and Neko Case have successful solo careers of their own as well, so balancing the input of the rest of the band has become a delicate task for Newman. When choosing the final tracklist for an album, he takes input from everyone. Sometimes people say to me, ‘I don’t know about putting that song on the record,’ and I’ll listen to them and think, ‘Yeah, maybe you’re right,” he said. “Sometimes I agree with them and say, ‘Yeah, let’s take that off the record,’ and sometimes I go, ‘No, you’re completely wrong, it has to be on the record.” Despite the admission that the decision ultimately comes down to him, Newman tries to keep a jovial mood about the entire process. “I try not to be megalomaniacal about the whole thing,” he said.
The group’s comfortable dynamic and success amid contemporary independent music makes them an excellent fit at their record label, Matador. They’re among good company within the catalog, which includes Yo La Tengo, Belle and Sebastian, Thurston Moore and Pavement.
“The ties to Matador and [Parent Company] Beggars are pretty deep,” said Newman, who is also on Matador as a solo artist. ”They’re all friends that go way back. I’ve always felt lucky to be on Matador because it was my No. 1 choice. If you’d asked me in 2000 what label I’d want to be on, I would have said Matador. And then by some stroke of luck, they were the label that chose us.”
Fans already looking to see what comes after their current tour will not have to wait very long.
“I think I would go back and make a new record. In fact, I’m feeling the urge to start working on the next record,” Newman said. “There is a dream that maybe we would do some recording on the bus this tour, we’ll see if that happens.” His hunger to keep creating new material is insatiable, and he has plenty of material saved away to work on and release soon.
“There are a few songs I would like to finish still,” he said. “There are a few songs that didn’t make the record that are very close to being done and I’d like to take a whack at them and see if we can finish them.”
The New Pornographers will be at Pappy and Harriet’s by Joshua Tree on Wednesday and at the Wiltern in Los Angeles on Friday. The band’s complicated touring schedule makes them a rare act to see — and one that shouldn’t be missed.