The New Pornographers' Carl Newman: The New Gay Interview

This world needs more red-headed rockers. Carl Newman does his part. (Photo by Karin Bubas)

The New Pornographers are playing the second of two sold out 9:30 Club shows tonight.

(Two celebrate the band's two 9:30 club shows, I have interviewed two of their members. You can read yesterday's conversation with Kathryn Calder here.)

So listen to this: I went to see last night's New Pornographers show at the 9:30 Club. Sometime-vocalist Neko Case wasn't there (she was sick, but should be there tonight) and the band started out on shaky ground. Half a set in they regained their energy and banged out an incredible show. I could not enjoy it, though, because I was receiving a great number of missed calls from a number I didn't know. Now I come from a Jewish family prone to near-death incidents, so "13 phone calls from an unknown number" immediately translates in my mind to "relative in intensive care."

I wasn't concerned enough to leave the show — that's how good it was. When the band finished their second encore, I rushed outside to figure out who the hell was calling me. Any guesses? It was New Porn's frontman himself, Carl Newman. Apparently my number is still in his phone from when I conduced this interview on Saturday. I was being pocket dialed by my favorite band's frontman during their own concert. This is the closest I will ever come to greatness.

Full interview beneath the fold.

The New Pornographers are made up of many temporary members (the most high profile of them, Dan Bejar, is currently touring with his own band Destroyer) and so their songwriter and lead vocalist Carl Newman shoulders the responsibility of being the bands public face and sole force of cohesion. Neko might be the best known, and all the other NPs do their part, but he's the man who writes the songs. The interview below might be a little longer than most, but its rare that I get to speak to someone with this much talent.

The New Gay Zack: You sold out two nights in a row at the 9:30 Club. How does it feel to have the band you started get so well respected in this country?

Carl Newman: It is strange, it's really odd. I spent so long playing in bands that didn't get any attention that it's funny to stick to it and finally get somewhere. In 1997 this band I was in called Superconductor opened for Guided by Voices at the 9:30 club. I remember sitting in front of a thousand people thinking "this is awesome, this is the closest I'll ever to be to a rock star, this is what it feels like to play in font of a thousand people." It's weird that ten years later we’re this band that can sell out the same place two nights in a row. Ten years before I accepted in my head that I would never be in a band that did that. I was grateful to be playing before a band that did that.

TNG: How much do you vary your set lists between the two nights?

CN: There's some songs you want to play every night, it's tricky finding that balance and not having two complete set lists where one is better than the other. We've been shaking it up and trying to different songs each night, four or five that we didn't do the night before.

TNG: I noticed at your last show you didn't play "Letter from an Occupant," which is probably your signature song. Is there a reason you don't bust that one out?

CN: I think it's good to have too many songs. We could do a set and we don't have to play that song, which is nice, there something annoying when people expect to hear a song from you every night. Like in '93 when Nirvana got booed because they left the stage and didn't play "Smells like Teen Spirit." He was just sick of playing that song. Not that we have a "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

TNG: Your previous albums have been mostly balls-out pop, but "Challengers" has more downtempo songs and ballads. Why is this?

CN: It's wanting to do something you've never done before. You get tired of sounding like yourself, you just want to do other things. That's what this record was, which might have annoyed some people but what do you do. I think we're known for being this really upbeat band and we put up a record that wasn't insanely upbeat. It wasn't all ballads, but we made a slightly stranger, more mid-tempo record.

TNG: Did you lose any fans for it?

CN: I know there was some backlash against this record, but you can't tell when you're playing live. Our shows are bigger than they've ever been, we do new songs and people really like them. It appears that our fans, the people that go to the show, like our records. I feel like if we had a backlash it was a critical backlash, but its not really my job to study such things. People in bands that do are probably very unhappy. Ultimately it's nice to be liked.. but who cares, really?

TNG: What is your band dynamic like with all your part-time members?

CN: It makes us not your typical band. There's us and Broken Social Scene, we're the only two bands that have that same thing going on. It is strange, sometimes you totally have to switch gears. When we toured in the fall we had Dan and Neko. Right after that we toured Europe and they didn't come with us. We switch gears and think 'what songs are we not going to play now?' It's a weakness and a strength at the same time.

TNG: Is it a better show if you have all your members?

CN: I like having everybody, it's definitely cool, but these last few nights have been totally awesome. It's not really for me to say. Its like 'Do you think you look better in blue or purple?'

TNG: You write songs that seem really opaque on the surface, but probably have a lot more going on than someone can easily decipher. What is your songwriting process?

CN: There's songs on this record that I think are fairly clear; "Challengers," "Unguided," "Go Places" How much do you need something spelled out for you? Even "Adventures in Solitude" is fairly clear. A lot of songs are impressionistic, but surely people can sense what a song is about if they put the effort into it. Not that I'm any master poet, but if you open up the Norton Anthology of Poetry, they're not that clear. A lot of them probably seem like gibberish. That's kind of what I'm trying do. You're trying to say something and you can't really say it any other way. I hate comparing myself to the giants of poetry or English literature or rock and roll, but at the same time you're making this art. When I'm writing lyrics I'm thinking about E.E. Cummings or Dylan Thomas and attempting to do something like that. It's like in Leonard Cohen's "Bird On a Wire," people ask what is "the drunk in a midnight choir" represent. It means he used to see drunks in Greece walking around and singing with each other. It's a personal thing from his life, but people hear it and try to imbue it with something universal. It has a life of its own and this kind of power. I'm not saying that's what I do, but that's how lyrics work. They don't have to make lyrical sense, they jut have to be evocative.

TNG: Since you write such personal songs, is it hard to give them to Neko or Kathryn to sing?

CN: I don't really want to sing that much. I don't think I have the greatest voice, I'd rather give songs to the girls to sing. Like with "Go Places" I thought 'Obviously this would totally work as a Neko song.'

TNG: It's not weird having Neko sing ["Go Places,] a love song that you wrote for your wife?

CN: Not really. I think 'Hey, my wife likes Neko." Isn't that the kind of thing you can do? To give a song you wrote for your wife to Neko so your wife's song can be sung with a beautiful voice, not her husband's croaky voice? It was the ultimate gift to save her from my voice.

TNG: What’s your favorite of all the songs you’ve written?

CN: No idea. It’s really tough. You always like your newer songs, they’re a lot more personal to me. Like “Letter from an Occupant” and “The Slow Descent into Alcoholism,” they’re great songs but they don’t really have a lot of personal meaning to me. I was just trying to write cool rock songs. Songs like “Adventures in Solitude” and “Go Places” have a lot of meaning to me, and that's worth something to me. That makes songs like that my favorite. Dan said to me that “Go Places” was the best song I’ve ever written. I took that as a high compliment, he’s one of my favorite songwriters, so lets go with “Go Places.”

TNG: Some reviews were saying “Adventures in Solitude” was actually about the war in Iraq...

CN: Not even remotely, I’m talking more about internal things. Whatever’s happening to the person in the song is happening to a person wholly by themselves. People just aren’t thinking. Iraq war, that’s stupid. Tell whoever said that that it’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. It’s a full-on sad song

TNG: I guess people go with the easiest explanations.

CN: That’s the weird thing, when you put the word wound or war in your songs, people take it completely literally. I think that’s so strange. I guess it makes sense, but in lyrics there’s a lot of metaphors. When they hear “I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight,” did they think the person just died? Are they saying, ‘How is he singing if he just died?” Or do they think he John Lennon is a walrus? That he thought he was a walrus?

TNG: Since you mentioned John Lennon, how do you feel about the prevalent opinion that The New Pornographers are today’s answer to The Beatles?

CN: It’s an inescapable influence. “The White Album” is always one of my favorite albums, because of that I never really worry about a record of mine being unfocused because one of my favorite albums is this unfocused collection of great songs. I’ve actually for years and years wanted to cover “the Continuing Story of Bungalo Bill,” but it's constantly shut down. A song like that is a small part of what influenced me to do The New Pornographers. That joy of a bunch of people singing together, a lot of other people have done it. Like the ending of “The Bleeding Heart Show” was probably an unconscious nod to “Hey Jude,” not that I was trying to do it.

TNG: I saw the video of your "Don't Bring Me Down" cover, it was great. What's the appeal of ELO to you? As someone who's been defending that band to their friends for years and years, its nice to finally see them get some love.

CN: I grew up listening to them, they're awesome. How can you not love "Livin' Thing" or "Sweet Talkin' Woman?" Those are just perfect examples of a pop song. I think in this indie world people are concerned with whether or not music is cheesy or cool, and I think sometimes people are afraid to listen to ELO and just go "This is fucking awesome."

TNG: For a while pop music meant Britney Spears or The Backstreet Boys, but I think bands like yours are reclaiming it to quality. What do you think pop means these days, and where is it headed?

CN: I don't know, it's pretty much anything. It was The Beatles that opened up pop music and made it so it meant anything. They did anything they wanted and it counted as pop. I think bands like us, or all indie rock bands, are just a continuation of that. We're going to do whatever we want. Beirut plays Slavic folk music crossed with indie rock and its pop, because why not? If people want to listen to it, it's pop music.

TNG: Where are The New Pornographers headed next? Will there be any more unexpected directions?

CN: I felt through the years, moving in the direction we were headed in for Challengers, that I wanted to go in that direction. I feel like I moved as far over that way as we'll go, we're not going to change into M. Ward or Jose Gonzalez or anything. I have a feeling that the next record will be pretty rock but that's just what I'm thinking. I'm writing more rock songs in 3/4 time, I don't know why. The way I write is very scattered, I don't know what's going to come out until the record's done. I'm amazed that we've actually gotten these records done. I look back at our four albums and my solo album and I think "How the hell did I do that?" I don't ever know where it came from. I feel the same way about the records to come, you just put your head down and start working.

TNG: How much have things changed in all the years of heading this band?

CN: We've become this crazy non-partying band. Last night we were sitting on the bus and I think it was the first time ever after the show that not single one of us was drunk. We were just sitting here at one in the morning on our bus and we were all sober, so good for us. We’re trying to clean up our act.

TNG: Don't clean it up too much.

CN: We won't. Maybe we've stopped drinking, but we'll find some other new vice.