Here's that interview you guys helped me with last month. I ain't really heard the album yet to be honest.
Carl Newman, fearless leader of Canadian indierock powerhouse The New Pornographers, seems a little distracted. Standing slack, clad modestly in an anonymous button-up shirt, he intently gazes up and to his right, as if at something in the hazy distance. At least that’s what I think he’s doing - I’m looking at a picture of him on the internet because this is a phone interview.
DK: How’s the yoga going?
CN: Good, good, good!
DK: Awesome, glad to hear it’s working out for you. Alright - going solo after being in a group dynamic as successful as New Pornographers, are you feeling a little like a pimp without his stable, and are you liking it?
CN: I dunno, the thing that many people don’t know is that in the recording of the New Pornographers albums, there isn’t really much of a group dynamic at all. Like, about eighty percent of the time, it’s just me and John in the studio by ourselves, and that’s pretty much how it was for my solo album, so there hasn’t been much of a difference at all.
DK: Okay. Your solo stuff sounds really sunny and a lot more spacious than the New Pornographers - are you feeling that way too?
CN: You think it sounds really FUNNY?!?
DK: No, no! I said SUNNY and more SPACIOUS.
CN: Oh yeah, definitely. I was trying to be more minimal, so there would be more space - I mean there’s just NO space in the New Pornographers, it’s all dense and hard-driving, so it seemed like an obvious trick to try and play how I am now. And also, I think, sometimes if you’re self-conscious about your songs, you tend to dress them up in all sorts of bells and whistles. So at some point you’ve gotta just try and have full confidence in your songwriting and let it stand on its own.
DK: Alright - The Canadian Indie Pop Explosion. Is it really happening, or is it just another fantasy scene being propped up by desperate journalists?
CN: I think it actually is. There is a strangely large amount of good Canadian bands popping up, and a lot of them are really getting widely championed - I mean we’re doing pretty well, so are Broken Social Scene, the Unicorns…
DK: So for the Vancouver scene, which bands are you backing that are kind of underheard?
CN: Well Destroyer, of course; Frog Eyes, though they’re from Victoria; The Battles, The Radio, The Nines - they’re all great.
DK: Okay, when I hear, say, American rock kids talking about Canadian music, they always seem to drop the same names - you and your homies, Hot Hot Heat, and like three or four others - like those people that say they ADORE Canuck cinema but then they just talk about Sarah Polley. Do you think the Canadian scene’s popularity can get a little incestuous?
CN: I don’t think it’s incestuous, really. I mean…TOWNS can be incestuous, I know Vancouver can be - you tend to run into the same people a lot and record with them, but I don’t really think it applies for the country - I mean, I don’t know that much about what’s happening in Toronto. And those bands, like Broken Social Scene, seemed to just pop up on their own, you know? The interesting thing is that there’s nothing really connecting them together, but they seem to be popping up in the media around the same time.
DK: I’ve read that you’re pretty serious about how people receive you. Do you ever just Google your name like, “Be gentle! Be gentle!”
CN: [laughs] I try not to Google myself. I don’t think it’s a very healthy habit.
DK: “Supergroup.” You’ve heard that a lot. Do you think it’s a silly term?
CN: Yes. I mean, why is it a supergroup, because everyone used to play in a different band? I mean MOST bands are made up of people who have played in different bands.
DK: Do you ever think Zumpano never got the credit it really deserved?
CN: Well, I try not to worry about that - it’s not peoples’ jobs to like us. I’m not going to be like, “Hey, you didn’t buy our records, you jerks!”
DK: Is it a good time to be a redhead?
CN: Yes. It’s a GREAT time to be a redhead.
DK: Okay, thanks for the chat Carl. By the way, I‘m starving, where’s a good place to eat?
CN: Szechuan Chongqing, on Commercial and 12th.
DK: Hey, I know that place! It’s good.
CN: I know.
― LC, Thursday, 10 June 2004 00:06 (twenty-two years ago)
four years pass...
four months pass...