Humble Pie: The New Pornographers

| Print Post This | Like (0) | Comments (0)

CARL NEWMAN HAS CUT HIMSELF a monster slice of humble pie and eaten the whole thing.

"Sometimes I feel like a complete charlatan, a complete fake," says the lead singer of Canadian indie-pop powerhouse The New Pornographers. "People write about me like I'm this Brian Wilson-ish producer, multi-instrumentalist. When really, I'm just like this hack."

That's nice, Carl. But anyone familiar with Carl "A.C." Newman's work knows he's got no place being so humble about anything.

Newman, who sings, plays a multitude of string instruments, and writes the majority of The New Pornographers' songs, is an enormous talent in talented company.

The band's seven other members include Dan Bejar of Destroyer and Neko Case, the alt-country solo artist whose bewitching voice becomes more central to the group's sound with each album.

Kathryn Calder, John Collins, Kurt Dahle, Blaine Thurier and Todd Fancey round out the large family, whose size Newman describes as both a blessing and a curse. Songs with complexity and depth are helped by the numbers, but "it will always be a little confusing to people," he says. "Because most people expect a band to be like, 'OK, there's the lead singer, and they're always singing.' But we're not that.'"

What The New Pornographers are is making a serious impression on the music world. The group's first album, "Mass Romantic" was named the 24th best indie album of all time by Blender magazine in 2007. They also picked up a Juno award in 2001 (that's Canadian for a Grammy). Currently, The New Pornos are on tour promoting their fourth record, "Challengers" (Matador)

While they stick to their power-pop roots (Cheap Trick is a strong influence), layered vocal harmonies and complex arrangements, "Challengers" offers a toned down, organic version of their previous work. The CD ditches some of the synth on 2005's "Twin Cinema" for slower numbers, which turn out to be the ideal vessel for Newman's hyper-literate lyrics and Case's hauntingly charmed vocals.

Although less convoluted than his usual writing, Newman's penning of the romantic title track still packs a beautiful punch in its well-crafted images. Newman agrees that while his words have always spoken to his audience, this is his most relatable song yet. "People say I write very oblique or elliptical or obtuse lyrics," he says, "and on 'Challengers' I wanted a song that was that was very clear and very clearly about something."

The New Pornographers play two sold-out shows at the 9:30 Club this week. Not so bad for a self-proclaimed "hack."

We know it's because he brings joy to the ears, but humble Carl might wrongly argue that it's just because he's around. "I'm like Sonny Bono, you know? Not the most talented, good-looking guy, but he's always there, he always shows up."

Express talked to Newman about songwriting, getting love from D.C. and his upcoming solo CD.

» EXPRESS: I'm going to see one of your shows at the 9:30 Club. People are really excited about it around here, as you know.
» NEWMAN: D.C. has been a strange stronghold for us. It might be the place where we're the most popular. The reaction is always good, but when someone sends me ticket sales for a tour, D.C. is always the first sold out. It's kinda funny because we had one of our worst shows of the last two years at the 9:30 Club opening for Belle & Sebastian. It was one of those shows where I would have felt really bad about it except that people got to see Belle & Sebastian next. But, you know, we've come back and kicked it since then. And the 9:30 Club, I've always loved that room too. I remember my [previous] band, we were called Super Conductor; we opened for Guided by Voices for a few weeks in 1997 and the place is full. And I remember being up on that stage and thinking, "So this is what it's like. I'm just going to pretend all these people came to see us." And I thought, "Awesome! This is a nice little glimpse into popularity that I'm getting here." And then I left that tour thinking, you know, that it was fun to have that experience, but never expecting that we would actually become that band that goes back to the 9:30 Club and sells it out for a couple nights.

» EXPRESS:So, you wrote all songs on "Challengers" except for tracks four, eight and 12. Tell me about your songwriting process. Do you always write with a specific vocalists in mind?
» NEWMAN: No, I'm never writing for anybody, really. I mean, I start writing the songs and as they start coming out, I'll start thinking, this would be really great if, you know, Neko sang this, or this would be cool if Kathryn sang this. Because a lot of the time I don't really want to sing that much. I have no problem with singing but I always like writing and arranging stuff and building these records. The whole process, there's method to it but there's a kind of mad method to it. The songs evolve over time. You bring them into the studio and you start working on them and then something might jump out from the song that you never expected that you think is really great and that becomes the center of the song and the song begins to shift and move 45 degrees in this direction and take on this new life of its own, if that makes any sense.

» EXPRESS:Are you always writing? Does it happen in surges?
» NEWMAN: I've been writing a lot in the last year, like, I'm recording a solo album right now and yeah, at the same time, I'm trying to write for the Pornographers as well. But again, I'm not really writing for either, I'm just writing. Sometimes I'll write a song thinking "This is for my solo album," and then I'll think, "Nah, this really feels like Pornographers song to me," and vice versa.

» EXPRESS:When are you expecting your solo album to come out?
» NEWMAN: It depends on when I get it done. I mean, because it's solo I don't have any strict guidelines when it needs to be done except self-imposed ones. I want to try to get it done by June, and maybe have it come out in October. I've been trying to stick to this album a year program, because I put out an album in 2003, 4, 5; I didn't make 6, but I made 7. If I could get 8 and 9, I think that would be impressive. That would mean I did six albums in seven years. It's all about quantity for me. I know I'm never going to break huge, so I gotta do quantity. I can't put out one album every four years that sells two million. And plus, this is what I do. I like the idea of just having a work ethic. I don't have to work a day job anymore; this is my job. So if this is my job, I should be treating it like my job and I shouldn't be dicking around, you know? I'm a songwriter, so I should be writing songs.

» EXPRESS:Do you have a favorite track on the album "Challengers"?
» NEWMAN: I really like the song "Challengers" itself. Maybe because I haven't done it that much on other records. I like the slower songs. I like "Challengers" and "Go Places" and I like "Unguided" and "Adventures in Solitude." I mean, in general, the Dan songs I just love cuz I'm a fan of Dan [Bejar]. And it's just so much easier to listen to somebody else's song and be a fan. It's hard to listen to your own songs. But, yeah, I think "Challengers" is probably my favorite, just because I like the simplicity of it.

» EXPRESS:Yes, I think "Challengers" and "Go Places" are my favorite songs on the album, too. Are we supposed to take them as insights into your personal life?
» NEWMAN: I mean, yeah. Those songs are very literal. I mean, they're pretty much the two songs for the girl who became my wife a few weeks before the album came out. I even put her name in there — Christina. I thought if I put her name in ["Go Places"], that was the most binding. More binding than the wedding ring, because now I've put it into a song that I'm going to stay with her so now I have to.

» EXPRESS:Are there specific people who influenced your writing style?
» NEWMAN: There's an awful lot of amazing songwriters. I think I'm inspired by people all along the way, like anybody. Arthur Lee from Love. He had a great combination of seemingly nonsense but also kind of deep, and slipping back and forth between the two very seamlessly. I also like Stuart [Murdoch] from Belle & Sebastian or Jeff Mangum from Neutral Milk Hotel. I really admire them. Or like, Vic Chestnutt. I'm a massive admirer of Dan [Bejar]; you know, I think Dan has had some influence on me as a lyricist. It's just trying to say something but not in necessarily the plainest possible way. All the writers of fiction that I really love can say things in a kind of sideways way. Like [Argentine] writer Jorge Luis Borges, he's not necessarily my favorite writer, but I like the way that he has these short stories that are, like, eight pages long but are so filled with ideas but have like hundreds of pages of subtext in them. These small stories that are like these gateways to this massive world. Let me say that, I don't think that that's what my songs are like, but I think that's something to shoot for.

» EXPRESS:You play a number of instruments. How did you learn them all?
» NEWMAN: Actually, I can't really play anything. I'm like, a jack of a few trades and master of none. I can pick up a mandolin and figure how to play the chords to my song, you know? Or at least figure out how to play it well enough that I can bring it to a real mandolin player and go, "Play something like this except play it better." Or, I can plunk out some melody on the banjo. A lot of rock music is not that difficult, so if you know how to play one string instrument you can pick up another string instrument, you know? And I also can sit down at a piano and plunk out the idea of what I want but usually I have to bring in somebody else to play it correctly. I know have a decent sense of melody and harmony and arrangement and I can play a few instruments, but I see other people who are incredibly talented in the studio and can play tons of instruments and I just marvel at them. I'm just a guy doing his best. I'm like Sonny Bono, you know? Not the most talented, good-looking guy, but he's always there, he always shows up.

» 9:30 Club, 815 V St. NW; Mon. & Tue., 7:30 p.m., sold out; 202-265-0930. (U St.-Cardozo)

Photos courtesy Matador Records