By now you’ve heard all the buzz about Montreal – home of The Arcade Fire, The Unicorns, The Dears, The Sam Roberts Band, The Stills, Wolf Parade and Stars. At this point, the cold French speaking city is none other than today’s rock and roll hot spot. It’s no longer just Siberia-by the St. Lawrence. Nope, nowadays if you’re from Montreal and your band sounds like Manowar, you might have a chance at a record deal. If you’re from Vancouver, you better keep practicing curling.
It’s a rainy October night in Montreal and The New Pornographers have trekked 3,000 miles east from their hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia to play a gig at La Tulipe, a renovated burlesque and cabaret theater. This gig is in Montreal’s north end, not far from the city’s Plateau/Mile end, the launching pad for many of the city’s above mentioned bands. Surely, this gig has been circled in red on the schedule since August.
The New Pornographers chief lyricist/singer/leader Carl Newman is one to think in opposite of popular opinion, in this case blowing off the whole Montreal big fuss. “I think people like to create a mythology,” says Newman on the phone from Vancouver, just prior to the tour’s start. “I don’t think there is anything insane brewing in Montreal. They got some good bands, you know, but they are bands that are unrelated. The Dears have been around for ten years. And the Arcade Fire showed up a couple years ago and Wolf Parade moved from Victoria. People are in the same place but kind of unrelated.”
That’s not to say Vancouver is only a winter sports Mecca. There is a Vancouver/Victoria axis of bands that include Black Mountain, Tegan and Sara, Frog Eyes and two of the bands that are on the opening bill this evening – Immaculate Machine and Destroyer- both of which have members in The New Pornographers.
The New Pornographers have just released Twin Cinema, their third album and another in the evolution of the band’s creative cycle of mixing influences from the past with a futuristic twist, with just enough Beach Boys, Ramones and Guide By Voices to please the masses. Or as Newman states, “taking pop structures and conventions and trying to fuck with them a bit.” They take the stage at La Tulipe as the helium harmonies of the Bee Gee’s “Emotions” plays from the theaters PA, perhaps an ode to the band’s sugary playfulness.
The New Pornographers are a six, seven, or sometimes eight person outfit, depending on the time, place and date. Tonight alt-country siren Neko Case is playing one of her selected tour dates with the group. Although she is considered a legitimate band member, having graced her vocals on all three albums and being there from the beginning in 1997; she’s grown apart from the pack with her burgeoning solo career.
The rest of The New Pornographers include: Blaine Thurier (keys), Kurt Dahle (drums & vocals), Todd Fancey (bass), John Collins (bass), Newman’s niece Kathryn Calder (keyboards and vocals) and pinch-hitting songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Dan Bejar. Everyone has played in another band in one form another, most notably Bejar with Destroyer, Newman with Zumpano, Dahle with Limblifter, Collins with The Evaporators, and Case, with her various solo endeavors. But despite all the group hopping, the band shakes off the title of “super-group,” as Mint Records did with their 2000 debut Mass Romantic was released. “I think they were just using anything that was a tagline to sell a few hundred copies of this album,” admits Newman. “Maybe on a Canadian level we work out of a supergroup, but of mainly bands that were only known in Canada, and some bands that were hardly known in Canada, like Zumpano and Destroyer. Especially back in 2000, those were not exactly household names by any means.”
Newman, who released his rave reviewed 2004 solo release The Slow Wonder, under the title A.C. Newman, is the ensembles leader and frontman. At 37, he’s played music for the better part of his life and his fiery guitar playing and biting lyrics, might be rock’s greatest secret. He speaks in a smart-aleck lisp that pokes through his harmony spiked singing, and it shows when we discuss the notion of supergroup a bit longer
“It always seems strange. Every band was made up of people from other bands,” asserts Newman. “Like The Hold Steady, didn’t they used to be in other bands? They’re a supergroup. The Strokes played in high school bands together- they are a supergroup made of players from some of the most prestigious private schools.”
Another word that Newman can’t stand is “collective,” particularly when it refers to Canadians. There seems to be a recent trend of bands sporting brothers, sisters, husbands and wives in fashionably retro clothing playing accordions, cellos, synthesizers, xylophones, and other vintage instruments with an indie mission. You can throw fellow maple leafers Broken Social Scene who encompass upwards of twenty members and David Bowie’s flavor of the month, The Arcade Fire, into this rig.
“A lot of Canadian bands are called ‘collectives’ for some reason, I don’t know why. It’s like Arcade Fire, a collective, Broken Social Scene – collective. Black Mountain – they’re a collective. It’s just another way of saying rock band I think. We’re just a band, you know. People make bands and people make records in different ways.”
Fair enough. Although to Newman’s own admission the band is made up non-superstars, perhaps it’s their reflective power pop that conjures up the sounds of Brian Wilson, Ben Folds, Ray Davies and James Mercer of The Shins. Throw that together with Case’s vocals and you have simple pop pleasures that are as seductive as Pinot Noir. In fact, Davies even joined the band at SXSW in fall 2001, performing the Kinks classic “Starstruck” for the first time ever.
“The Slow Descent into Alchoholism” off Mass Romantic steals the boisterous piano riff from Maxine Nightingale’s 70’s hit “Right Back Where We Started From,” crashing head-first into a smirky indie rock song. In a perfect world, this concept of pop would be blaring from radios. The debut would go on to win a Juno (Canada’s version of the Grammy’s) for best alternative album. Fast forward to 2003’s Electric Version where the spaces are filled with synthesizers and buzzing acoustic guitars and a five-part harmony vocal in just the right spot. 2005’s Twin Cinema, is their most aggressive and accomplished effort to date, as the band trades some of the power pop overload in favor of a more organic rock sound, one that serves as crossover material. Songs like the ominous “Three or Four” or Bejar’s “Broken Beads” reek of sinister, with its dark underlying chords, proving Newman can actually howl to the depths of black with poise.
“I think I’m getting a healthy sense of confidence. I used to read negative reviews and be like ‘he’s right, we’re terrible.’ Now I read negative reviews and I think, ‘this guy has his head up his ass.’ It’s good to finally get to that point where you have self-confidence in what you do, it kind of totally removes the power of anybody that wants to attack what you want to do,” says Newman.
Even with their crossover pop sound, having a name like The New Pornographers, sets you up for easy attack. Other than keyboardist Blaine Thurier, who is a filmmaker, the band aren’t exactly choreographing money shots. Although it was widely reported that the New Pornographers got their name from a pamphlet put out by televangelist Jimmy Swaggart condemning rock ‘n’ roll as “the new pornography,” the origin draws nothing close.
“I saw the Japanese movie The Pornographers and I thought it was an interesting word. On the first Destroyer record, Dan has a song “the Pornographers.” I remember wanting to put the word new in front of something like “the new sneakers of the new Christy Minstrels.” I always thought that bands that put new in front of their name was somehow kind of modern in a false way. Like do you really have to call yourself the new? Does it really have to be illustrated by those words.’ So I like the words “the pornographers,” and “The New Pornographers” just fell together. I don’t know, I can’t tell if it’s a bad name or shitty name.”
Clashing with the accessible sound is demonic voiced Dan Bejar, playing John Lennon to Newman’s Paul McCartney. Following a set of dark indie-folk with Destroyer, Bejar comes on stage to play a string of songs he wrote with The New Pornographers, including “Jackie” and it’s sequel “Jackie Dressed in Cobras.” Armed with a bottle of beer in his hand and microphone in the other, Bejar holds the stage with a possessed glare, in tune with a beatnik Dean Ween
Case, who has just wrapped up recording her next solo album, a follow-up to her 2004 live album The Tigers Have Spoken, is the next line of alt-country sirens carrying in the vain of Emmylou Harris and Lucinda Williams. However, it’s with The New Pornographers that she gets to explore her Chuck Taylor high top side. With an attractive head of fiery auburn hair, and shaking a tambourine next to her exquisite vocals, Case ignores her obvious sex appeal to just be “one of the guys.”
Case needs the Pornographers about as much as Ryan Adams needs another drink so her participation is limited to recording sessions and limited touring. The band wasn’t sure they were even going to have her on Twin Cinema, but when Newman writes songs for her, like the stirring ballad “These are the Fables,” you clearly understand why she’s onboard. But with the addition of Newman’s long lost niece Calder, a classically trained piano player, who ads perfect backup harmonies, the band is finally preparing for life without Neko. “When we depended on Neko’s schedule, that basically meant no touring. She’s cool with us playing shows without her. If people are disappointed when Neko isn’t there, well then what can you do? You can only get fooled once, you can’t get fooled again.”
The one hour and fifteen-minute set leans heavily on the Twin Cinema songs, as each of the seven band members – eight including Bejar’s drunk appearances – round out the sound. Collins and Fancey stay in the back, laying rhythm on guitar and bass, while Thurier and Calder share the keyboard work, brewing a sonic landscape of fuzz and harmony. With so many songs to choose from, an hour and fifteen-minute set is barely fair, but there is a method to the band’s nitpicking.
“You want to play all of the new songs, even though there are older songs people want to hear. There are songs that I can see getting passed over. I’m in the mind of learning every song just in case we need to do it,” explains Newman. “I don’t want to be the band that doesn’t know how to play one of their songs. There are a lot of bands that are like that. They are like, ‘we haven’t played that song in three years, so we forgot it’.”
If 2005 is the year of Canada, in the footsteps of 1992 being the year of Seattle, than there is one thing Newman can ultimately agree on. Having made the Blender 100, a pop culture hot list that includes Kayne West, Jessica Simpson, Franz Ferdinand and podcasts, Newman would be foolish to ignore his success. “Somebody told me there was a Pitchfork Media article on us, and I read it and the first line said, ‘it’s a good time to be Carl Newman.’ And I thought ‘is, it? ’ Well maybe it is.”
Even though Vancouver is pushing the progressive button in other avenues like the marijuana industry and universal health-care, the New Pornographers are proving that Vancouver’s musical scene is a breeding ground of its own. “I think Canada is such a small country population wise and so much of it is concentrated around Ontario and Quebec that especially in Canadian media they kind of forget that Vancouver even exists. You kind of want to wave you hands and say, ‘hey, the New Pornographers over here. We might be even more popular than The Dears and The Stars. We’re not from Montreal, but…”
As the New Pornographers end their show, the PA system blares “Magic,” from the Scottish trio Pilot. With the chorus, “Oh, oh, oh, it’s magic,” the performance is bookended by another “pop gem” out of the PA. Bejar runs out on the floor with a bottle in his hand, stepping on top of a chair and looking into the crowd dazed and confused. Dahle, looking like he hardly broke a sweat, looks ten years younger than he did behind the kit, takes the time to meet fans. You can’t call the New Pornographers a “collective” or “supergroup,” but they have enough staying power to be even more popular than The Arcade Fires, Broken Social Scenes and Wolf Parades out there. After all, they have the pop to become just that…and they’re from Vancouver.
