Hey-La, Hey-La

{The Q&A version of something originally written for Time Out Chicago. I don't think it made the transcript, but Carl Newman told me that the band's name was also inspired by one of my favorite Japanese films of all time, Shohei Imamura's The Pornographers, as well as by the requisite Jimmy Swaggart rant about rock music. Still gotta try that vanilla vodka and Dr. Pepper concoction, but I am currently on the wagon ...}

Boy genius tunesmith Carl Newman is the Big Mamou behind the New Pornographers - that snappy Canadian supergroup known for its surging, sugared melodies, swell harmonizing, quirky lyrics and "Letter From an Occupant," the 2002 bust-out single that features a soaring vocal from our favorite sassy lassie, Neko Case. (Reputedly, Newman instructed the twang-friendly Case to belt out her lines "like a robot," and, over time, her career as a New Pornographer has made an equally compelling case for Case as her countrified solo arc.)

Newman, a gangly redhead, is on tour promoting the most recent Porno epic, Twin Cinema (Matador), an excursion into sheer pop gorgeousness that attempts to keep the band's sound intact while ditching some of the more obvious allusions with which it gets stuck.

Carl Newman: Yesterday was a landmark show for us. It's the first time since Mass Romantic came out that we played a show without Neko. My niece, who was on the record, was singing all the Neko parts. It was actually cool. I knew that Katherine could totally slay them but I was still kind of nervous. Are people going to be: "Boo! We want Neko!" But it wasn't like that at all.

Me: Is she about the same size as Neko? Could you put a Neko wig on her and pretend?

No.

I've always loved your records, without being much of an aficionado. I just liked the super-melodic element, the over-the-top pop and the originality of the lyrics.

We're trying. Pretty much, that's it. Working within the pop song format, and trying to create something that's catchy and will appeal to somebody on a simple, easy level. But hit them in a different way. Those were always the bands that inspired me. Roxy Music, or Love. The Thinker Fellers ... no one really remembers them, they were a Matador band. They had the most amazing combination of amazing melodicism and just really crazy odd music. Sometimes they sounded like a hillbilly version of the Residents. They had mandolins and banjos in a very odd way. But they always sang together and were very melodic. People always talk about the Beach Boys, and that's an influence - sometimes it's hard not to be influenced by stuff that's so iconic. But bands like the Thinking Fellers really inspired me. Or a band like the Fiery Furnaces right now. I like the bands that are really off in their own place and aren't that concerned that their music isn't the style.

Those bands probably find their audience faster in today's environment.Those bands probably find their audience faster in today's environment.

Things have definitely changed.

MP3s.

When our record was finished, even before the record was in the hands of the label, they wanted to put an MP3 on the site so they could beat the leaks. The distance between an album being handed to a label and ending up in the Internet is two or three weeks. I can probably already go see our album being reviewed on a blog. The information superhighway: More so than ever, it's conceivable that bands could just explode overnight.

I still remember waiting for copies of import 45s to make it over from England, and lining up for weeks-old copies of NME.

It's really cool that the NME has become less powerful. Now you have stuff like Pitchfork. I remember being a teenager, and, like, NME seemed like the coolest. Even though you know if you were hanging around with a bunch of NME writers you would probably want to punch them - a bunch of annoying 22-year-old assholes who want to be Lester Bangs.

That describes all rock critics, actually. How did you get into songwriting?

I started out because I fell into being a singer. My first band, which we used to call a "fuck band," just for "what the hell," we were called Superconductor, and we were never meant to be a real band. We had six guitar players. We were jamming, a bunch of us playing guitars and making noise, and one day I got bored with playing guitar and I walked over to the microphone and I just started yelling, or whatever the hell, and that's how I fell in and became the singer because nobody wanted to. I became fascinated by it. Then I decided to try writing songs. It was prog-grunge. It wasn't long after that I became fascinated by the classics, like Burt Bacharach and Brian Wilson. And I decided to do something more musically sophisticated, so I started Zumpano, and did that for a while. Both those first bands, they got some notoriety but I felt I was just learning. I think I began to figure it out with this band. I finally decided, screw it. I'm tired of band politics. I want to do these songs the way I want them done. And if it sucks, I'll take all the blame. That makes it seem like it's all me, though - but it's not.

To me it all sounds cohesive but there's a lot of push-pull. It feels very collective.

One of the things we've got going for us is we have a monstrous rhythm section. People talk to me like I'm some kind of Brian Wilson. If I made records by myself, they'd probably sound more like the Shaggs. I shouldn't say that, but me, just myself, is more minimal, and John and Curt bring those rock ‘n' roll chops.

It swings. There's a buoyance beneath it all. It helps to see Neko bounce across the stage in some crazy fur hat.

I haven't seen her hop onstage in a long time.

It was the only time I saw you guys, at Warsaw in Greenpoint.

That was one of our best shows ever. That's when all the people were onstage at the end.

My girlfriend at the time showed up drunk and angry, so it didn't work out so well for me. Great show though.

Drunk, angry girlfriends? I feel for you there. We're not such bad guys, do we deserve that drunk anger?

I know! Other than that, I still remember that trampoline feel to the music. But the lyrics take me forever to decode. I like the way they sound. They aren't obvious.

Sometimes I think the lyrics are gibberish, but I don't sit there and study my own work. When I look at them, I don't think they're gibberish. That song "Sing Me Spanish Techno" I basically write for my girlfriend. She inspired the title. She listened to it, and said, "Aside from the line ‘Sing me Spanish techno,' I don't know what you're going on about." So, I had to go through it line by line and explain this means this, and this represents that. And she said "OK, I get it." It's maddening. I sat there in high school and college and had to dissect these stupid poems by these great poets that I didn't understand and I had to figure them out. And I write these poems and lyrics, and nobody even bothers to dissect them, and I had to do that bullshit. I had to dissect terrible Jim Morrison poetry when I was in grade 10. I had an ex-hippie teacher. "Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding ..."? It's the one about the dead Indian that jumped into his soul. He also made us dissect "American Pie," which I could get behind. That one's pretty simple, although kind of cheesy.

It has a mystique. A cheesy mystique. So, Twin Cinema, is that a flashback to pre-multiplex days?

It's a metaphor about looking. You ever look at something, you look at the same thing and all of a sudden you see it in completely different ways. It's the idea of looking at the same thing through two different eyes. There's a lot of film and theater imagery to convey this simple idea. On the corner of 16th and Valencia in San Francisco I went through an epiphany. All of a sudden everything looks slightly different. I don't know if that happens to a lot of people. It's also about the things that remain. What seems universal and what changes. It's kind of vague.

I was thinking about actual twin cinemas. It was a big step forward. Now twin cinemas are relics, where they show 99 cent movies.

It must have been revolutionary: You have the choice of two movies!

I used to be an usher at one in my hometown. I didn't last very long.

You made a good career move.

OK, dumb question time. What's the deal with the band's name? I think it's brilliant but some people could easily think it's kind of stupid.

It was inspired by the Japanese movie The Pornographers.

That's a great movie. I thought that might be it.

And then the fact I always wanted to have a band called "The New..." Like the New Seekers. I was fascinated that there were the Seekers, who rule, and they were these square-looking people, and then there were the New Seekers, and the New Seekers were these good-looking hippies. They sang "I'd Like To Teach the World To Sing." I decided it was funny, even though there was no band called the Pornographers. Some names have a portent, and I trust that.

Do you sit around with a notebook and torture yourself?

The music always comes first. "Sing Me Spanish Techno" is the only song on the record that started with a phrase.

Will you sing me Spanish techno? What is Spanish techno?

My girlfriend, I forget why we talked about it, she went to school for a couple of semesters in Spain, and she said the only Spanish she remembered was Spanish from Spanish techno songs she sang along with in clubs. So when she told me that I probably said, "Sing me Spanish techno." And then I thought, "Hey, that's a catchy bunch of words I just said there."

Your keyboards remind me of late '70s new wave.

We got away from that. I was tired of the Cars references. That song doesn't sound anything like the Cars, but the keyboard sounds like the Cars so I guess we sound like the Cars.

I always thought the keyboards were there like little triggers to pull people in. It reminds you of a period, but nothing else does.

It was fun for a while, but then you get sick of it. Some of these songs if they had a synth on it, we decided to use a pump organ or a piano. We're more into using low atmospheric synths or using it for little burbling stuff. We didn't really use synth much. We used a lot of E-bow. The one synthesizer sound we liked to use sounded a lot like an E-bow.

E-bows rock. Are you a beer-drinker at all?

Yeah. I don't feel like one right now.

Have you converted to Anchor Steam since moving to San Francisco to live with your girlfriend?

I haven't been drinking beer much lately. I'm drinking vanilla vodka. I stumbled upon this drink that I totally loved. It was vanilla vodka and Dr. Pepper, which basically tastes like Dr. Pepper. I thought, shit, this drink is tasty. Now it's my drink. It's like drinking pop, and I'm getting wasted.

It's going in the rider now, right? You'll set new standards for rock star debauchery.

Hey, it IS going to go in the rider!