The New Pornographers

“Every time I’m doing an interview for an album I tell the person ‘just wait for our next record’” says Carl Newman, “that’s my stock quote”.  Speaking from his “idyllic” home in Woodstock, New York, Newman is articulate and friendly, though his conversation is littered with what one suspects are many such standard responses.  But then, the lead singer, primary songwriter and general guiding hand behind the New Pornographers has had plenty of time to hone the subtle art of the soundbite.

It’s getting on ten years since the Vancouverite collective released their ebullient debut Mass Romantic.  In that time they’ve cemented a reputation as generous purveyors of pop exuberance, while never quite seeming to reach the same giddy heights promised with that initial release.  The guarana kick of tracks such as ‘All the Things that Go to Make’ from 2007’s Challenger have become the exception to the rule, spacious power ballads rising to the fore as the group have gently matured.

So, has the energy been difficult to sustain?  “I think we’ll always have that, [which] makes me want to always push out and do different things” says Newman, “it makes me wanna go and be more minimal.  It’s important just to be happy with what you’re doing and not feel like you’re just doing the same thing.  If we’re not America’s Number One Party Band anymore then, well, that’s just our fate.

“I think we will always be a rock group, it’s our default setting.  Even on this new record, it’s pretty much an upbeat rock record.  When I listen to Grizzly Bear or Fleet Foxes or Bon Iver, I think, yeah we sound like AC/DC!”  The new record in question is Together and is certainly at odds with the introspective nostalgia currently doing the rounds, songs such as ‘The Crash Years’ matching Newman’s obliquely recalcitrant lyrics with blithely hummable hooks.

Although the name suggests warm and rosy inclusiveness, as Newman explains: “in its way, Together was a little bit defiant.  Because everybody’s doing their own things [people are] always like ‘the New Pornographers are about to break up.  They’re on their last legs.’  Also, when we first started ten years ago we used to do this cover of the song ‘Together’ by the Illusion, so when I remembered that I thought ‘things have come full circle’.  Calling it Together in a way was a very elliptical way of calling the record Get Back.”

Given the part-time status of most of the band’s members – Dan Bejar is more widely recognised for the whimsical complexities of Destroyer, while Neko Case is better known as an unstoppable force of nature Neko Case – the New Pornographer’s continued existence has at times indeed seemed unlikely to outsiders.  For Newman though this is simply the way of things: “we’ve done it for so long – you just get used to it.  Neko doesn’t write any songs in the band, so it’s not like she’s making this massive shift.”

Things aren’t so clear cut for Newman himself, balancing his New Pornographer songwriting duties with his own solo work.  “There isn’t really a clear line,” he says.  “There are some songs on my last solo record [last year’s Get Guilty] like 'Prophets', where I listen to it now I think ‘I think I should’ve made that a New Pornographers’ song’.  But what can I do?  Of course I could play those songs live with the New Pornographers.  I might try it.”

Perhaps the collective’s (Newman dislikes hearing the words ‘super’ and ‘group’ spoken in the same breath) resilience comes from the flexibility of their approach, the ability to absorb differing levels of involvement and seamlessly incorporate whatever’s on offer.  Together is a case in point, featuring guest contributions from Zach Condon (aka Beirut), Annie Clark (St Vincent), the Dap-Kings as well as Will Sheff of Okkervil River.  “It was a last minute thing” explains Newman.  “We were getting to the end of the record and we were trying to fill in the blanks.  We were just very lucky that we happened to be in New York and all these people were around.  It’s such a collecting place for interesting people.  You’ve got a giant talent pool to choose from.”

Although keenly aware of the debt he owes the land of the maple leaf – “Canada is really good [when it comes to] supporting their own culture; I think we’ve gleaned some of the fruits of that” – Newman seems happy in his adopted home, particularly in light of political events of the last eighteen months.  “It’s amazing to have Obama as president.  Now you hear all the wingnuts, right wing people talk, and it’s nice to know that they’re not in power, that they’re on the fringes and that they’re getting crazier.  It gives you some hope definitely.”

With an extended tour of North America in the works over the coming months, and an Australian tour (with the full lineup) slated for early next year, cautious hope seems to be the order of the day.  Not that Newman will be satisfied anytime soon.  “Together is the definitive New Pornographers record.  Not as good as our next record is going to be though.  That’s going to be the ultra-definitive album.”


First published in The Brag, May 2010

The stem from the seed - Pikelet

Evelyn Morris is a busy sort.  When she’s not managing Melbourne’s Hell’s Kitchen, there’s the small business of writing, recording and performing as Pikelet, her acclaimed psych-folk project.  Since the release of her self-titled debut in 2007, she’s toured with the likes of Sufjan Stevens, Beirut and The Ruby Suns as well as been featured at Laneway and Golden Plains.  Not that any of this seems likely to go to her head any time soon.

‘So you have to go and work your job’ she explains over the wire, in a voice that sounds like it belongs to someone with their feet firmly planted.  ‘And you’ve gotta go home and you might feel like bored or frustrated or lonely from your day.  And rather than just sit at home we go and jam together or play shows.  For me it’s just the way I live my life – music’s a huge relief for me.  It’s about having some freedom from the things you have to do.’

Pikelet has undergone some serious transformations over the last few years.  Although it largely remains a solo project for Morris, the addition of three regular band members has opened up the sound palette and allowed things to grow into wild and unexpected shapes.  Her second album is Stem, a woozy synth-drenched headtrip, one part Virginia Woolf to two parts Lewis Carroll.

‘The name comes from the initials of all the band members’ she explains over the traffic noise that occasionally blares down the line.  ‘I wanted it to be something that celebrated the fact that the boys are in the band now – it was sort of the only one that stuck.  It also comes from the fact that it’s the second album’ she adds, ‘kind of like the stem from the seed.’  From small things great things can indeed grow.

While Stem has been heaped with lavish praise from practically every publication of note in the country, there seems to be a tendency to emphasise the lush sonic surface that Morris has constructed.  Many have remarked on Celeste Potter’s striking cover art – hapless fluffy bunnies tumbling into a hole leading godknowswhere – while failing to note the bleak implications.  And this on an album where the first track is about a bloke doing a Baltimore Quaker and setting himself alight.  I take a breath and ask Morris how she responds to characterisations of Pikelet as ‘cute’.

‘That’s one of the things that’s never really stuck too well with me’ she says.  ‘It’s not what I’m going for and it’s not what the undercurrent of most of the songs are.  Pikelet is meant to be a bit of a surreptitious response or reaction to the way that women generally exist as musicians in Australia.  Women in Australian music tend to be either singer songwriters who sing about love and relationships and emotions and stuff OR they might be the rock chick.  I wanted something that’s a little more different to that.  When people diminish the identity of Pikelet to just being pretty and twee my feminist hackles go up!  The music’s definitely more about the darker side of people’s existence.’

Although she doesn’t ‘think about influences too much’, Morris often references sixties psychedelic folk in her music, while pointing to groups such as Broadcast (and by extension the United States of America), the Incredible String Band, Brian Eno or seventies Australian acid-folk Extradition as touchstones.  She also likes Scott Walker.  ‘His music is just amazing!  If you listen to the surface, you just go like ‘I’m just some thirties or forties guy crooning’, but you listen to the lyrics and he’s singing about gonorrhea and being molested in the army.’  I throw out the possibility that she might like to provoke a similar reaction with Pikelet.  ‘I want the whole thing can be a little more subtle than that.  I want to tread a fine line between things being dark or light, have a bit of a mixture of both.’

So, what does she hope to communicate with Pikelet?  ‘People often diminish pop music as being insignificant and pointless’ she muses, ‘but it’s music that’s in the collective consciousness and in the larger community at this point in time.  That’s something that I’m very interested in, getting into people’s brains, and figuring out how a large group of people all think at the same time.  We’re all living in the same place y’know.  It’s kind of nice to imagine that there can be ways to communicate with large groups of people.’  She laughs: ‘Sorry that got really existential.’

Morris is also an enthusiastic fan of emerging acts such as Josh Armistead or Extreme Wheeze – ‘there’s so many good bands in Melbourne - for me it’s inspiring’ – and is understandably concerned by the effect recent changes to Victorian licensing laws linking live music venues with ‘high risk conditions’ have had on Melbourne’s music scene.  So much so that she’s been a vocal supporter of SLAM – Save Live Australia’s Music – which delivered a petition of 22,000 signatures protesting the law to the state government the day before we spoke.

So, what’s at stake?  ‘The venue that I book and work at Hell’s Kitchen can’t afford to put on gigs, as it’s too small to afford security guards’ she explains, ‘I don’t rely on these small venues for Pikelet anymore so much, but that’s not the point.  What about when someone else comes along who wants to express themselves?  [Small shows are] SO important for developing a cultural identity.  I mean, we’ve all been there plugging away playing these ridiculous little shows, but all of those little shows matter, they all spark something.  The small things are the things that we need to protect the most.  It’s more about the future than it is about right now.’  Amen.

First published in The Brag, April 2010

The Drones @ The Annandale, 4th March ‘10

There is a forty-year old within my acquaintance who possesses an encyclopaedic knowledge of Australian rock, but does not care for The Drones.  As far as I can make out this is because their music ‘insists upon itself’.  They certainly have no time for raised eyebrows or tongue filled cheeks, but then they’ve certainly earned the right to be as unironic as they wish, filling the Annandale’s dank confines tonight with a suitably sweaty press.

Based on his support spot tonight, Jack Ladder on the other hand hasn’t quite got there.  The elements are in place, his Nick Cave circa Boatman’s Call warble interweaving nicely with some clean steel guitar.  The wildness wasn’t however and the set stagnated under the weight of its own seriousness, not helped by the at times dragging slowness of the songs themselves.

Perhaps it’s just that heavy material needs to feel lived in to be believable, which is exactly what Gareth Liddiard seems to understand.  His vocal delivery is a bodily event, skinny frame twitching with buttoned down agitation, raw lyrics chewed to mush and spagged back out.  He settled into a controlled rhythm, holding it together before unleashing the spastic, only breaking the spell between songs to clear his ravaged trachea.

The last few years of touring have honed the rest of the band into an equally focussed unit.  Taken as a whole, they were in the zone tonight, offering the crowd some of their best material, ‘Shark Fin Blues’, the spiky atonal Nintendo riff of ‘The Minotaur’ before encoring with Kev Carmody’s gut-wrenching ‘River of Tears’.  Riveting.


First published in The Brag, March 2010