New Pornographers

Sum of Their Parts
The New Pornographers Try to Keep a Loaded Roster on the Same Page
By Andrew Clayman
Published in The Cleveland Scene (Village Voice), April 2008



For a man who supposedly hates hearing his band referred to as a “supergroup,” Carl Newman certainly has a super-caliber flair for the dramatic. Last fall, the New Pornographers’ frontman made an aesthetic decision worthy of Audioslave, equipping the backdrop of each stage show with a giant, flashing sign bearing his band’s not-so-PC moniker. It wasn’t exactly the sort of eye-popping prop one typically expects to see at an indie rock concert.

“Yeah, there was no stopping Carl about that sign,” says John Collins, the New Pornographers’ long-time bassist. “I mean, there’s definitely no way that a somewhat ‘with it’ band, in this day and age, can have a huge, flashing neon lights sign behind them and not have a bit of a gag going, you know? But I think it might have actually helped us play with a bit more energy,” he laughs. “I mean, it’s a big sign that says ‘New Pornographers!’ It’s like pyro, you know? It’s simple and hilarious. Nickelback has its fancy explosions and we have our big sign.”

Collins isn’t sure if the big sign will be making the trip this time around, as the Pornographers start the latest leg of the tour in support of their fourth album, Challengers. However, the contents of the band’s tour bus is always pretty unpredictable, especially where it concerns the human passengers.

Somewhat like the Canadian indie-rock equivalent of the Wu Tang Clan, the New Pornographers are a conglomerate of talented individual artists who aren’t always easy to gather into one place at one time. Newman, a former member of defunct Vancouver pop band Zumpano, started the band in the late ‘90s as a collaborative experiment of sorts, eventually roping in Dan Bejar from Destroyer, Collins from the Evaporators, Todd Fancey and Kurt Dahle from Limblifter, keyboardist/filmmaker Blaine Thurier, and the then relatively unknown country crooner Neko Case, who was an American transplant going to art school in Vancouver.

Dubbed The New Pornographers, the new band went to work on a slew of up-tempo, high energy power-pop songs that would eventually become their acclaimed 2000 debut, Mass Romantic. It was around this time that the term “supergroup” first started floating around the band’s periphery.

“Well, I’ve always thought it was hilarious to call ourselves a supergroup,” Collins says. “I think it was mostly just pure hype when we were starting out. I might have mentioned or suggested to one or two people that we were a supergroup, in jest, and it took off from there. This was when Dan (Bejar) had like two records out, and Neko (Case) had maybe one solo record, and we weren’t even on a label yet.

“But, over time, it’s kind of manifested itself a bit, where it actually seems true now—the supergroup thing-- even though it still feels like kind of a joke to me. Carl hates the concept, but I think it’s funny that it keeps coming around.”

As Collins suggests, the New Pornographers’ status as a rock supergroup—whether Newman agrees or not—has become pretty darn legitimate in recent years. Like any purist knows, a true supergroup consists of members who have generated equal or greater standing from their work in other projects (see Blind Faith, Traveling Wilburys, or if you must, Asia). This definition certainly applies in the case of the New Pornographers, a band that’s found its own success rivaled only by that of some of its individual components.

During the past seven years, after signing to the mighty American indie label Matador, the NP’s have steadily grown into one of indie rock’s most popular and critically lauded acts, earning practically unanimous kudos for their combination of ‘70s power-pop, ‘80s New Wave, and Brian Wilson-like, mad-genius production stylings. During these same years, band members Bejar and Case have seen their own profiles rise exponentially, too, becoming darlings of indie music in their own right.

The trouble is, as success spreads, a loss of focus often follows. In the past month, Bejar’s band Destroyer released a new album, and Case has been at work developing songs for the follow-up to her 2006 hit, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. As a result, getting the full Pornographers line-up together for a tour, as they did much of last year—isn’t getting any easier.

“I think we’re going to have Neko on this leg, but no Dan,” Collins says, noting that the band is equipped to make up for anyone’s absence, particularly since singer/keyboardist Kathryn Calder joined the fold a couple years ago.

“We’ve kind of got it down now,” he says. “We cross our fingers and hope that Neko will come, and we don’t even bother crossing our fingers for Dan most of the time, but occasionally he comes. And everyone else just gets together.

“I think Carl has mentioned on at least one occasion that he’s the only Pornographer that’s played every show. So, every one of us has either not been in the band at one time or another, or been sick, or away on tour. So we just kind of make do.”

Unfortunately, due to the complex, multi-layered nature of most of the band’s catalog, “making do” often means having to get very creative, re-assigning various parts to translate a song to the stage.

“We always kind of worry about that stuff a little bit when we’re recording,” admits Collins, who co-produced Challengers. “Sometimes it’s like, ‘Oh, shit, how are we going to do this?’ But we always pull it off. There are a lot of us in the band who can pull off whatever’s needed instrumentally. So there are songs we play live where I’ll play Carl’s acoustic part or Blaine will play my bass part on his keyboard—we cover all the bases, let’s put it that way.”

Collins occasionally sounds like he’s tiptoeing, less than gingerly, around some bitterness, particularly when it comes to Bejar. Not surprisingly, some journalists have gone digging for more of this inner-band dissension, assuming that the clash of egos could create some nice soap opera turmoil for bored indie kids to read about. When given the opportunity to laugh off the rumors as pure silliness, however, Collins doesn’t completely bite.

“Well, we’ve had our moments,” he says dryly. “It happens, you know? The band hasn’t always been a bunch of levelheaded adults. But for the most part, it’s been pretty smooth sailing and not a lot of drama.”