For the past two decades, the New Pornographers have been a steady, reliable presence in the world of indie rock. Since the release of Mass Romantic in 2000, the US-Canadian ensemble has dropped a new album blending shades of new wave, glam, psychedelia, and pure pop every few years. And each one has fallen within a spectrum of “great” to “goddamn masterpiece.” That they’ve been able to pull off that feat through various lineup shifts—from the inclusion of keyboardist/vocalist Kathryn Calder in 2005 and losing the contributions of singer/songwriter Dan Bejar and drummer Kurt Dahle following the release of 2015’s Brill Bruisers—only makes their 20-year run that much more remarkable.
The key to the New Pornographers’ continued eminence has been the steady hand of its leader, A.C. Newman. Though he’s been joined through every step of this project by co-producer and bassist John Collins, singer Neko Case, and keyboardist Blaine Thurier, Newman has been the prime mover in the band, writing or co-writing nearly all their material and providing the sonic framework for each LP. And for the group’s most recent album In the Morse Code of Brake Lights, he’s taken an even stronger role, producing the record on his own and, in doing so, building thick, multi-layered songs suffused with strings and the always rich vocal interplay between himself, Calder, and Case.
Prior to the New Pornographers’ next run of live shows, which includes a stop on January 31 at Roseland Theater, we caught up with Newman to discuss touring and recording, his memories of the band’s earliest days, and to find out a little more about a night he spent performing a house show in Tacoma in a room filled with pictures of clowns. You know, the important stuff.
PORTLAND MERCURY: With as many albums as you and the band have under your collective belts, how do you go about choosing a setlist for a tour like this?
A.C. Newman: It can be tricky, but in some ways, it’s kind of easy. You’re just boiling the albums down. It’s like, “What do we have to play from the album Mass Romantic? It’s probably gotta be the song ‘Mass Romantic.’” Or, “What do we need to play from Electric Version? Well, probably, ‘The Laws Have Changed’ and ‘Testament To Youth in Verse.’” When it gets tricky is when you want to pull out deep cuts. But we don’t want to play for two-and-a-half hours, so what do we lose? It’s getting harder to cut songs. There are songs that I like that I thought, “Well, this has to be cut.”
Do you leave yourself a fair amount of leeway to change the setlist from night to night or do you stick to what you’ve rehearsed?
It’s fun to change it up a little bit. The thing is: When you start touring, you don’t know what your set should be. When you’re touring on a new record, you don’t know what set works best for you, so you try a few different ones and you find the set that works. Then if you change it just for the sake of changing it, we find that that wasn’t as good. I feel like in the last few tours, I figured out a template for a set where there are songs we could just move in and out. If a song has a similar vibe, I’ll switch it out with another song. Like, we’ll do “Use It” instead of “Sing Me Spanish Techno” and I think it will serve the same purpose. We’re trying to learn a lot of songs.
I’ve been joking about it on Twitter, and I don’t know if it’s going to happen, but this year is the 20th anniversary of Mass Romantic and the 15th anniversary of Twin Cinema. I’m thinking that, when we get together, we should learn all these songs and go back to the songs that we haven’t played in a long, long time.
With decisions like that, and most anything else with the band, do you see the New Pornographers as a democracy even though you are the figurehead of the group?
Not necessarily. In some ways we’re a democracy. When it comes to making records, you want as much input as possible from people. But I think I am ultimately the gatekeeper. It’s hard to get an idea that I really don’t like past me. That doesn’t mean that all my ideas are the best and I only want to use my ideas. I’m so happy when someone steps up and does something great, and I will fight for those ideas that I like. When a band is too much of a democracy, I think it just becomes a mess. Sometimes it can work. I’ve found in band situations, when you try to be a pure democracy, there’s always a person who says, “Well, if nobody’s in charge, then I’m in charge.”
After years and years of being in a band, I realized that, like it or not, this is the band I started and I basically have to be the leader. It’s just kind of been thrust upon me even if I don’t want it.
At the same time, as you said, when it comes to the music, you are very open to input from your bandmates. What I’ve read in other interviews with you is that you don’t generally come into the studio with a finished song, or if it is finished, you’re open to letting it be changed as the band gets a hold of it.
Less so because a lot of that process I’ve been doing at home for the last few years. The reason that was the case was I would take songs that were very rough demos and sit down with John [Collins] and we would start working on them. They would evolve like that. But now I’m doing a lot of that work from home by myself, which is a lot cheaper than letting things evolve in the studio. But in my mind, I’m always thinking, “Why can’t this be easier?” And I realized: Because it isn’t. Sometimes I will sit down to sing vocals on the demo and think, “Have I finished? Are the lyrics good enough? Are they done?” I have to remind myself that it doesn’t matter. You’re going to listen back to them and you will decide then. It’s a process that can drive a person to madness.
What about the process of making In The Morse Code of Brake Lights? This is the first album by the band where you weren’t sharing the producer role with John. Was it an easy thing to know when a song was finished or did people have to take them away from you at some point?
About a year ago, we had a bunch of the mixing done and we were talking with management and talking with Neko about what was good for her schedule. I was working to get the record out by May. Then it turned out that it was coming out in September. So there was a point where the record was almost done, but it wasn’t technically due for another three months. The minute I found out, I thought, “Oh no… I’m going to tinker on this for three fucking months. This is almost done, but I’m not going to stop working on it.” That ended up being basically true. The song that ended up being the single, “Falling Down the Stairs of Your Smile,” during that three months, I was thinking, “It’s not gonna make the record.” Everybody around me was going, “You’re crazy. That’s my favorite song.”
I bring that up just to show that you can lose your way. When you’re working on a record and you don’t know if it’s done or if it needs work or if it’s bad or good. Sometimes I need to ask somebody else.
The music on Morse Code feels pretty dense to me. There’s a lot going on there. Was that because of that time you had to tinker with it or was that how you envisioned the music from the beginning; this almost symphonic approach with strings and all these layers of sound?
I did want to mess around with the crazy strings more. I know that was something I decided fairly early on. I think we’ve always been dense. I think “Falling Down the Stairs” is a different kind of dense though. There’s lots of things happening but you can still hear the space inside of it. I’ve always loved messing around with music like that; where one melody is going up while another one is going down. And another countermelody is riding over the top of it. I think it comes down to loving the Beach Boys. I think of the choral breakdown in “God Only Knows.” I think that had a massive influence on me. All those melodies soaring all over the place.
As you said, 2020 marks the 20th anniversary of the first New Pornographers album coming out. When you think back on that time, in those early days of the band, what stands out most for you?
I always look back fondly on that moment. It’s such an exciting time in the band when you start to get noticed. It’s almost like being in love. I was at my job and I went to the 7-11 and I picked up the new Rolling Stone and went for drinks with my co-workers. I was sitting there and reading it and I was like, “Look, I’m in fucking Rolling Stone!” We got this glowing review. I didn’t feel like I was bragging. It was more like I was just filled with awe. I can’t believe we got here.
There was so much of that. I felt that way a month when we went to South By Southwest and were one of the buzz bands. It didn’t even matter that I wasn’t even making much money. We would get 100 people in Philadelphia and I would think, “Wow, we’re popular!” And then we would sell out Brownies in New York City and that’s like 200 people. Twenty years later, you’re a little jaded. If we drew the same amount of people on this tour that we did on the Mass Romantic tour, we would be really sad. But back in 2001, you’re thinking, “Holy shit, we’ve got the world in our pockets right now.”
When I told some folks that I was interviewing you, a friend of a friend wanted me to ask about a show that he saw you play in Tacoma with [cult singer/songwriter] Harvey Sid Fisher.
Well, the show in Tacoma was a house show. These guys from the band Seaweed had a house and they had a room that was decorated with clowns. There were pictures of clowns, but scattered in with them was clown porn. It was very, very dark. We set up and played inside the clown room. I was sitting there playing bass, even though I don’t play bass. It was the only instrument that was left. And Harvey Sid Fisher is singing, “I am, I am, I am the ram!” It was a very surreal, funny, funny little tour.
The New Pornographers, Fri Jan 31, Roseland Theater, $35-55