Happy Together Cool or Not, New Pornographers Stay Catchy on Fifth Album By Andrew Clayman Published in The Nashville Scene, June 2010
Patience. Precision. Polish. These are not favorable words in the indie-rock lexicon. In fact, more often than not, they’re just code language for “older,” “duller,” and “uncool.” That the New Pornographers are encountering such snarky criticisms of their fifth album, Together, should come as little surprise. Among the mostly Canadian group’s core members, Carl Newman is now 42, Neko Case, 39, and Dan Bejar, 38—making them all roughly twice the age of Brooklyn’s various bourgeois hipster rockers of the moment. Toss in the Pornographers’ shared admiration for the slickly produced sounds of the ‘70s (Newman cites both Led Zeppelin and ABBA as key influences on his new material), and the disconnect becomes clearer. Despite the Matador label and cameo appearances from the likes of Annie Clark (St. Vincent) and Zach Condon (Beirut), Together is really an indie-rock album in name only. This, more accurately, is pop music—in the most unapologetic, Fleetwood Mac-ian expression of the term.
The press materials that Matador Records is bundling with Together describe the record as a combination of “the freewheeling, glammy spirit of Mass Romantic” and “the very personal, emotional songwriting of the NPs’ most recent material.” While this is genius, grab-all marketing copy, the nod to the New Pornographers’ beloved 2000 debut album is a bit of a reach.
Like many near-perfect albums, Mass Romantic was the result of a lot of young, budding talent collaborating without pretense—or even a plan—in the right time and place. Carl Newman, on what would prove to be a permanent hiatus from his Sub Pop band Zumpano, basically spent a couple years jamming with his fellow Vancouver-based friends, including John Collins of Thee Evaporators, Bejar from Destroyer, Kurt Dahle of Limblifter, and eventually, the American transplant and upstart country crooner Neko Case. On a low budget, with more adrenalin than studio tricks, they managed to make a killer power-pop album, elevated quickly into cult classic status by the subsequent blossoming of Bejar, Newman, and particularly Case’s solo careers. In an odd way, the New Pornographers had become a supergroup sort of retroactively.
By contrast, Together (which charted at a career-best #18 on the Billboard Top 200) is the full realization of the NPs as a collection of noted and respected stars—rather than a rag tag gang of Canucks on their way to greater heights. Even in comparison to the band’s gradually more refined middle albums—Electric Version (2003), Twin Cinema (2005), and the sometimes-meandering Challengers (2007)—this is their most “adult” affair. And no, that’s not a bad thing. Just a different thing.
“Crash Years,” for example, is a damn catchy song, but it’s very much in the vein of a George Harrison single circa 1987. “Daughters of Sorrow,” with Bejar at the helm, has a definite 5th Dimension vibe to it. And then there’s arguably the best song on the album, the Case-sung “My Shepherd.” It’s a slow-burning anthem not too dissimilar from past NP classics like “The Bleeding Heart Show,” and like so many of Newman’s compositions, it’s structurally flawless. There is a sort of formality to it, though, that might just be an unavoidable consequence of becoming too good at what you do—too refined, too spot-on.
Once upon a time, “Letter from an Occupant” was the New Pornographers’ trademark track— a 3-minute, super-up-tempo joyride penned by Newman, sung by Case, and played with enough exuberance to make it sound like the song’s seams were going to burst. It was far from pretentious or experimental, but it did have a rawness and immediacy to it than won the hearts of hipsters and pop kids alike. Together doesn’t offer anything like that, but it would probably be unfair and silly to expect it to. Matador could have simply said, “the New Pornographers won’t be making Mass Romantic again, but they have recorded 12 more really good pop songs that pretty much nobody could dislike, so, enjoy!”
Sloan @ Grog Shop, Cleveland, December 6 by Andrew Clayman Published in The Cleveland Scene, December 2009
Always under the mainstream radar in the U.S., veteran power-pop quartet Sloan lives a different existence in its native Canada, where the band has been lavished with awards and chart success for more than 15 years. Pop purists in the tradition of Big Star and the Raspberries, Sloan also share kinship with contemporary power-pop revivalists like Fountains of Wayne, Brendan Benson and the New Pornographers. The formula is consistent but rarely disappointing: slick guitar riffs, bouncing keyboards, high energy and sweet harmonies. There’s not a single dog in the band’s nine-album discography, which makes its virtual anonymity in the U.S. all the more perplexing.
To their credit, Sloan have deftly handled the presumably frustrating balance of touring as a big-ticket act up north and a small-fry cult band in the States. They can open for the Rolling Stones in Halifax one night and put just as much passion into a Grog Shop stop a few months later. The band’s current jaunt will be stirring up buzz for their new online-only EP Hit & Run, which was completed as frontman Chris Murphy recovered from injuries he suffered in a hit-and-run accident back in July. Case in point: Nothing can keep a good Canadian down.
Sometimes the demands of anchoring a power-pop supergroup become too much to bear, and Carl Newman must leave behind the New Pornographers for his fortress of solitude. It is here that he magically transforms into “AC Newman,” mild mannered solo artist and architect of the predictably enjoyable Get Guilty.
Like his first solo album, 2004’s The Slow Wonder, Newman is actually far from alone on this LP. Get Guilty is pure power-pop as grandiose as anything the New Pornographers or his first band Zumpano ever did, complete with strings, flutes, and trumpets ablare. If the last New Pornos record (2007’s Challengers) sounded “more like an AC Newman record,” as many critics complained, then it’s only fitting to say that this AC Newman record now “sounds like the New Pornographers”—paradoxically speaking.
The big harmonies usually delivered by Neko Case are ably replaced here by Nicole Atkins, along with Kori Gardner and Jason Hammel from Mates of State. Perhaps by no coincidence, lead single “The Palace at 4 AM” has the distinctive rhythmic punch of a Mates of State song, with bouncing piano keys racing to catch up with a hectic drum march. The song’s title, meanwhile, references a short story by Donald Barthelme—a typically snobby lyrical move from one of pop’s true eggheads.
As often happens on Newman’s records, two of the best songs on Get Guilty are buried a bit on side B, including the sing-along anthem “Changeling” and stringy ballad “Young Atlantis,” a movie-credits cousin of the Pornographers’ “These Are the Fables.”
(Andrew Clayman) Published in The Metro Pulse, January 2009
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.”
Destroyer Trouble In Dreams Merge The eighth Destroyer album is a revelation on a couple fronts. First, it’s hard to deny that—at least for the time being—Dan Bejar is writing stronger melodies than his New Pornographers cohort Carl Newman. Secondly, after six or seven years listening to the man’s unconventional but oddly familiar vocal stylings, Trouble In Dreams finally helped me realize that Bejar sounds exactly like a cross between Robyn Hitchcock and Grover from Sesame Street. To be more accurate, it would have to be Super Grover, to account for the pretentiousness. But I digress.
Trouble In Dreams picks up where 2006’s Rubies left off, with Bejar testing out his tried and true weirdo storytelling approach in increasingly catchy, slickly produced environs. In fact, the Hitchcock similarities probably came to light in large part because of the ‘80s tinged psych-poppiness of tracks like “Dark Leaves Form a Thread” and “My Favorite Year.” Other times, though, the retro piano balladry starts to sound considerably more mainstream, like a Dire Straits slow down (“Foam Hands”) or, um, Bruce Hornsby and the Range (“Introducing Angels”)? If Bejar wasn’t such an intriguing little Muppet, it might all be too much. But he’s still one of the best wordsmiths out there, and he’s made it clear yet again. Destroyer is not his “other” band.
The In-Between Girl Neko Case Talks Nostalgia, Banter & Beards By Andrew Clayman Published in The Metro Pulse, April 2007 She is the indie scene’s omnipresent anti-diva— the punk rock tomboy turned alt-country temptress. One week, she’s in New York recording a new album with her Canadian power-pop buddies The New Pornographers, and the next, she’s back in Chicago playing the sold-out opening dates of her own spring tour. At this moment, however, Neko Case is in her new adopted home of Tucson, AZ, stirring a cup of tea and describing what might happen if her bandmate Jon Rauhouse ever battled Calexico’s similarly named Paul Niehaus in a pay-per-view, steel guitarist showdown.
“I think it would just end up being a massive fist fight,” she laughs, then quickly reconsiders. “Actually, they’re both so nice, they’d just be saying, You go ahead. No, after you! Nooo, you! They would eventually wear each other out and retire exhausted, embracing on the stage. It would be adorable.”
The same could be said of Case herself. Even on the phone, her sweet, congenial speaking voice sounds more like it belongs to your hip kid sister than a 36 year-old, Patsy Cline caliber torch singer. It’s a charming characteristic that Case has famously utilized on stage, often juxtaposing a wicked murder ballad with some witty, self-deprecating banter before crooning into the stratosphere once more.
“It’s not something I do on purpose, really,” she says. “I know the reason I talked to the audience, originally, was because I was nervous. And I am not good at pretending or hiding things, so I figured it’d be a lot easier if I just told them as much. From then, it became kind of funny, you know, and I realized that the audience really responds if you talk to them that way. It’s not the same every night, but I do like to talk to everybody, because I hope-- and this is my aim— that it makes the audience feel like it’s their Friday night, too. They don’t have to just stand there silent while we play music. That’s a real drag. I want everyone to feel that good time feeling, because I spent my whole childhood, from about 12 on, going to shows. It was what made me feel good. It was my favorite thing. So I want other people to have that feeling, too.”
In Neko’s case, that good time feeling provided both a stabilizing force and an escape route during her rebellious teen years in Tacoma, WA. Every bit the punk rock girl of Dead Milkmen lore, she left home at 15, played the drums for a string of local bands, and eventually traveled across the border to Vancouver to attend art school in the early 90’s. It was in Canada where Case’s unparalleled pipes were finally heard-- singing and drumming with the girl-punk outfit Maow, becoming the secret weapon in The New Pornographers, and perhaps most importantly, embracing her budding passion for classic country music on her 1997 solo debut, The Virginian. It may have seemed like a bit of a leap to some, but for Case herself, the worlds of punk and country never felt too far apart.
“Looking at it from the inside of the two, I don’t know that there’s much of a difference, actually,” she explains, “except for some stylistic things here or there. They’re both kind of dissatisfied and passionate forms of music. It’s not as much a difference of being punk rock or country as it is the difference of being an independent musician to being a musician on a major label from the time you’re young. Those are the two different worlds more than anything.”
Case’s own musical worlds collided in 2000, when The New Pornographers’ Mass Romantic and her own Furnace Room Lullaby garnered a heap of praise from separate ends of the indie spectrum. Riding that wave, she bolted Vancouver for the deserts of Tucson, enlisting the aid of Southwestern stalwarts Howe Gelb (Giant Sand) and Joey Burns and John Convertino (Calexico) for her 2002 country-noir triumph, Blacklisted.
It was on the Blacklisted tour in 2003 that Case and her then touring band of Jon Rauhouse (guitar, banjo, pedal steel), Tom V. Ray (upright bass), and guest vocalist Kelly Hogan recorded a live set for the Austin City Limits TV program— an appearance that was finally released on DVD last fall.
“It was such a fun time,” Case recalls. “I’m really glad that there’s an artifact out there of when we were a three piece. Of course, we had Kelly Hogan in the set, too. But we used to just travel all the time as a three piece-- Jon and Tom and I-- so I’m really glad there’s an artifact of that.” Case pauses for a moment. “And also, I’m glad there’s an artifact of Tom’s beard,” she laughs, referring to her bassist’s formerly shoulder-length chin-locks. “It’s more for Tommy’s beard than anyone!”
Both Rauhouse and Ray are back in the fold for the current tour, which is the latest in support of 2006’s complex and gorgeous Fox Confessor Brings the Flood— a wildly acclaimed album that has earned Case as much respect for her inventive songwriting as her canyon wide vocal range. Guitarist Paul Rigby and drummer Barry Mirochnick have been brought on to add a new dynamic to the band’s live sound, and Neko Case’s “favorite singer in the world,” Kelly Hogan, is now a permanent member of the family, as well. Adds Case, “Kelly’s pretty much the most badass rock n’ roll assassin of all-time!”
She may have a point, too. When Case and Hogan activate their wonder twin powers for the ghostly, heart-wrenching harmonies on Fox Confessor tracks like “Hold On, Hold On” and “Maybe Sparrow,” the songs’ deeper meanings seem to unfold in spite of their somewhat cryptic lyrics. Casting herself as “the mean girl, or somebody’s in-between girl,” Neko Case is being more wistful than cynical— more reflective than declarative.
“Oh yeah, I’m horribly nostalgic and romantic and all those things,” she admits. “But for my general outlook on life, I think it’s an incredibly positive thing. I still feel like I’m 19 years-old and all the possibilities of the world are open to me. But sometimes in making pragmatic adult decisions,” she laughs, “that may not be the greatest thing in the world. But as you get older, it becomes an art form— balancing your romantic side with your logical side.”
Or your punk side with your country side. Your American with your Canadian. Your present with your past. Whatever it takes to find that good time feeling.
.jpg)