These things
get louder

The New Pornographers get it Together

SKATE EXPECTATIONS: The New Pornographers

by LORRAINE CARPENTER

“We like to pretend that we don’t like each other,” says Kathryn Calder, referring to Broken Social Scene, whose latest album shared an early-May release date with that of the New Pornographers. “I feel uncomfortable picking a fight with people I don’t really know but Carl [Newman] is confident enough that he knows those guys and it’s all just bullshit.”

Not much was made of this would-be rivalry between the two supergroups, apart from a few Blur vs. Oasis jokes on CBC and in New York Magazine—trash-talking and crass marketing wouldn’t quite befit the Canadian indie set, after all. But Together and Forgiveness Rock Record come at a significant time in each band’s career. Broken Social Scene’s fourth LP follows a five-year hiatus and near break-up, driving up the stakes, while the arrival of the New Pornographers’ fifth should confirm whether or not the band is still vital, or content to simply coast with the same formula. Luckily, Together employs the collective’s strengths to move forward and accelerate.

“It’s obviously more upbeat, and more of a rock record,” says Calder. “I always find it really fascinating to be around when he’s writing and recording,” she adds, the “he” being her uncle, New Pornographers grand chief Carl Newman, who has said he was striving for a balance between Led Zeppelin and the 5th Dimension with this album. “He’s pretty free with his melodies and very prolific, so it’s great to watch things unfold and change directions entirely on whims, instinctually.”

Roughly a year ago, Calder and fellow New Pornographers Neko Case, Dan Bejar, John Collins, Kurt Dahle, Todd Fancey, Blaine Thurier and engineers Phil Palazzolo and (Calder’s boyfriend) Colin Stewart joined Newman at his home and guest cottage (a “makeshift studio”) in Woodstock, NY, to record the bulk of Together, but not together.

“Everybody flies in—it all sounds very glamorous—but we all came in separately to add our parts. I heard the songs for the first time and we just went through them one by one and I improvised for however long it took before we got something that we liked. He likes to throw out a lot of, ‘Can you do it in the style of “Waterloo” by ABBA?’ There’s a lot more leeway to do different things, not just piano and singing, but come up with different sounds. I had a lot of fun.”

After five years in the New Pornographers, Calder has left her other band, Immaculate Machine, and is due to release her solo debut, Are You My Mother?, on Aug. 10. It was shortly after the New Pornographers established themselves with their 2000 debut Mass Romantic that Neko Case and Dan Bejar (with his band Destroyer) became internationally renowned, making the band something of a supergroup in reverse, but Calder has more modest expectations for herself. After delaying the record’s release for two years to care for her ailing mother (who suffered from Lou Gehrig’s disease), Calder says she’s unlikely to embark on a solo tour, and is content to finally launch a project that her mother championed.

“She was very supportive and she really loved the record as well. Of course she’s my mother, she had to love the record. After she passed away, I decided okay, alright, I guess now it’s time.”

WITH THE DODOS, THE DUTCHESS
& THE DUKE AT LE NATIONAL ON
THURSDAY, JUNE 17, 8 P.M.,
$30, ALL AGES