Carl Newman of the long-running and influential indie-rock band The New Pornographers has a vague idea of what kind of music he doesn’t make, even if he can’t really put a label on the kind he does. After finding out writer Chris Holm had contributed an essay on his work in the book “Go All The Way: A Literary Appreciation of Power Pop,” he was perplexed and took to Twitter to see what people thought was the proper definition of that vague musical term.
“I don’t think anybody really knows,” says Newman when I asked him about the data he had collected, over the phone. “They say Big Star is. I mean, I guess? I just always thought they were a rock band. Same thing with Cheap Trick. To me, I always thought it was a very slim description. I always thought it was The Knack or bands that sound like The Knack.”
But as he posed the question to his followers, he was overwhelmed by the responses he got reaffirming Holm’s writing. The mob decreed Newman “Power Pop,” whether he liked it or not.
“I started talking about it very flippantly and then 1,600 people replied to me. Then I thought, this is hilarious. I have to be the ‘Power Pop’ guy now? I don’t want to be the real life ‘Power Pop Pop-up.’”
Over the course of his career, Newman has been one of the most reliable earworm singer-songwriters in all of indie-rock, both on his own under the name “A.C. Newman” and with The New Pornographers, where he writes and records along with the incredible in her own right Neko Case and, at one time, Dan Bejar of Destroyer. On their eighth album, “In the Morse Code of Brake Lights,” you get a sense to what Newman is trying to understand. It has hooks that are akin to pop music. Very good ones. But you can’t really justify placing it in a genre that can detract from the explosion of ideas found within it’s 40 minute runtime. The same can be said if you go back to the band’s early days.
“I want every song to feel original to me. I want it to sound like there is a reason for it to exist in the world,” – Carl Newman of The New Pornographers
“I’ve always loved writing pop songs but I think I just thought we were going to be a rock band,” says Newman, thinking back to writing the songs of the band’s debut, “Mass Romantic,” which came out nearly 20 years ago. “I wanted us to be a cool sounding rock band. But once you become a little popular, then people want you to start explaining yourself more … I was just absorbing anything that I thought that was good at the time.”
The same feeling has stuck with Newman over the years, and his explanations have never been any more convoluted than what they need to be. He wants to make good records, so he makes them. Simple as that.
“I just sit down and try to write songs. I don’t know where they’re going to go. I don’t know what I’m going to do with them. I just want to put my head down and write something that I think is good. Which is what I’ve always done so I figure, why don’t I just keep doing that? I think the way I approach it is fairly honest. I’m not striving for a specific thing. I’m just going where the song needs to go,” explains Newman.
But creating great music is something that does not happen out of thin air. Newman understands this as much as anyone.
“I never find it easy to write songs,” says Newman. “I always have a lot of songs begin, but it’s very hard for me to finish a song. A lot of it is in the arrangements. I feel like having the melody and the chords and lyrics is only half of it. After that, I think, ‘What should the song sound like?’ That part is difficult. I want every song to feel original to me. I want it to sound like there is a reason for it to exist in the world. In terms of becoming comfortable in my own skin as a songwriter, I know what it involves. I know there are no shortcuts for me.”
As many of the band members have different projects they are involved with, I ask Newman if keeping the Pornographers actively recording has become difficult.
“It always has been difficult,” says Newman. “Neko lives relatively close to me now. So in that respect, it’s a little easier in that I can get her to drive to me or I can drive out to see her. A lot of things we can do long-distance these days. Like, Kathyrn [Calder] has her own studio at home. So, I realize I don’t have to be standing behind her while she’s working on something. She can record things and she can send them to me and I can give her feedback. That makes recording a lot easier. I’m a lot more savvy in the studio now than I used to be. I can do a lot more at home, at my own studio, which is great for me. I can treat making an album like a job. I can work for 5 hours in the studio and then I can go pick up the kid and then go do normal guy stuff.”
Catch The New Pornographers on tour this Fall.
