Fresh Starts

Connection or isolation? The New Pornographers’ latest album ponders the choice

Written by STEVE LEFTRIDGE

A. C. Newman, leader of indierock luminaries the New Pornographers, is enjoying the bucolic life. A few years ago, Newman and his wife ditched their apartment in New York City and moved upstate to Woodstock, where Newman is preparing for the New Pornographers’ album release and U.S. tour, which includes a stop at the Sheldon on April 27.

“Woodstock is kind of a bubble within a bubble within a bubble,” Newman says. “Maybe St. Louis is the same way.”

He is talking about being in a socio-political blue island surrounded by a sea of red counties. As an affable, talky fellow, Newman breaks that topic down further, spending the first part of our chat detailing the differences between Woodstock and Bethel, where the 1969 Woodstock festival actually took place.

Newman, however, is no New York native. He was born and raised in Vancouver, where he cofounded the New Pornographers in 1997. Now, the geographically scattered band members, including American siren Neko Case and bassist/producer John Collins, have recorded nine lauded albums.

Having passed the 25-year mark, the New Pornographers enjoy an impassioned following, owing to an extensive catalog of off-kilter power pop typified by multi-layered melodic sugar, quirky sonic embellishments, co-ed vocals and Newman’s distinctive, cracked poetry.

In 2021, the Pornographers took a sort of victory lap with a tour playing two classic albums — 2000’s Mass Romantic and 2005’s Twin Cinema — in full. That served as something of a palate cleanser ahead of an excellently eclectic new album, Continue as a Guest.

On the phone from Woodstock, Newman chatted about the new album, new ways of writing and singing, and the upcoming tour.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Let’s talk about the new album. What was the recording process like during the pandemic?

I did a lot of it at home. Almost everybody in the band has a way to record at home. I think for us, recording during the pandemic was not so strange. There’s always been that element of wondering how we are going to get together. Except in the past, it wasn’t a pandemic keeping us apart — it was just life in general.

How do the songs come together in terms of instrumental and vocal arrangements?

It’s kind of random. With vocals, I don’t really write for anybody. I have a tendency to write melodies that are kind of all over the place, so it gets really high at points and low at points. So it just made sense that, OK, I’m the male voice, so I’ll do the low part, and Kathyrn or Neko or Nora [O’Connor] will do the high parts. That’s basically what we’ve done. But there’s no method. I haven’t figured out a formula yet. I just go in and start working until it feels right. I can’t think of any other way to do it.

Are you the one directing traffic when it comes to putting the ar- rangements together?

Yeah. I usually have a lot of the vocals mapped out. If I don’t, I just say, “Just sing whatever you feel like singing here.” If it works, that’s awesome. If it doesn’t, we don’t use it. It’s the same thing with arranging the songs. I would send the songs to Kathryn or Todd or John, and they would just send me back a bunch of ideas — knowing that I wouldn’t use all of them. They’d send me five things for a song, and I’d use the one that I thought worked. That’s great because it kind of replicates the feeling of being together and experimenting except we’re not all in the same room at the time.

Did the pandemic end up informing the new album?

I think the main way it informed the record was lyrically, the themes in it. It was hard to write about anything other than the pandemic. A lot of things seemed unimportant. Like, the first song I wrote lyrics for on the record was “Marie and the Undersea,” and I felt really stuck with writing lyrics because I didn’t know how I could write about anything that is not what is going on right now. Like, how can I pretend this is not going on and write a love song or write a song like, “Boo-hoo, my heart is broken?” So with “Marie and the Undersea,” I decided to write about somebody that is not me. I had been reading about nurses working 24-7 in emergen- cy rooms because of COVID, and I thought, “I’m going to write about this person.”

Had you done that kind of thirdperson writing much before? No, not at all. I think it helped me get out of a block because I realized that getting out of myself felt like a release. This is a song that’s not about me. It’s about someone else. Then, of course, when I continued from there, my own self slipped in everywhere because it’s hard not to be sort of solipsistic when writing pop music — or doing anything really. But it did make me think, “I like this, and I want to write this way.”

Is theme something you think about, or does it develop while making an album? Or has a cohesive theme not been that important to you?

I don’t think I’ve ever been super concerned about the overall theme. Occasionally things have crept in. Like, sometimes there would be four or five songs on a record that would have a similar vibe and theme, and then the other seven songs don’t.

I’ve never really wanted to make a concept record, but I’ve been thinking about it more because it’s something I’ve never done. When you’ve been playing and writing music for a long time, you try to figure out a new way to do what you do and keep yourself entertained. I mean, to write

Continued on pg 36