Group Dynamic

Taking a stand: The New Pornographers. From left: Kurt Dahle, Todd Fancey, Neko Case, John Collins, Carl Newman and Blaine Thurier. Photo Steven Dewall. Courtesy New Pornographers.

While Canada has become a supremely efficient branch plant for indie-rock flavours of the month, Vancouver’s New Pornographers aren’t mere shooting stars. Together since 1997, the Pornographers set up a beachhead in the mainstream years ago — a Juno Award, New York Times features. Critical admiration? Near absolute. Record sales? Their discs are inching up towards the magic 100,000 units worldwide. Their first album, Mass Romantic (2000), was made on a $2,000 budget; the latest, $50,000.

Artistically and commercially, Twin Cinema, the band’s upcoming new album (out Aug. 23), might see them at the top of their game. Spin magazine has already made it its lead review, and the band’s American label, Matador, is pushing hard this fall, before a month-long North American tour begins at the end of September.

The New Pornographers have been called the “bastard spawn” of Blondie and the Beach Boys. It’s perfectly fastidious pop, in which chief songwriter Carl Newman distills the essence of two generations of record collections the way director Wes Anderson does with movies: layering detail upon detail with a thrilling, nerdish flair.

What’s curious now, as the individual members of the Pornographers climb into their mid-30s, is how their original supergroup conceit has been tugged in different directions. The strict frontline symmetry is still there: the clean-cut tunesmith (Newman), the alt-country chanteuse (Neko Case) and the subterranean member (Dan Bejar). But their interests are incredibly wide. Bejar has composed music for an upcoming theatre production by Toronto writer Sheila Heti; keyboardist Blaine Thurier is making films; bassist John Collins operates JC/DC studios with partner David Carswell.

Twin Cinema might be the first Pornographers album that translates this range. It’s arty, self-conscious and eyeing bigger things than a little rock band ordinarily would. Just ask Collins, their producer and prime mover in the studio, the band’s real home right from the start.

Courtesy Matador Records.

“I think it’s been built into every guy who likes to record music, this sort of prog[-rock] tendency just waiting for an opportunity to show itself,” Collins told me recently. “Basically, the Pornographers were an attempt at making really pop-sounding music with certain kinds of adventurous production. But once you make a couple records like that, whether you are or not, you might worry that you’re sitting on your laurels.” Twin Cinema, he says, is an attempt “to create something a little more cerebral.”

All of Newman’s love of language is here — the catchy Sing Me Spanish Techno, the roaring “hey-la” chorus in The Bleeding Heart Show — but what stands out even more is the band’s incredible fascination with detail. A go-for-it pop album is often the product of hours of studio time: hacking old tunes apart, cutting and pasting from one song to the other.

“It’s kind of like a drop-in centre,” says Newman, referring to the sessions at JC/DC’s Downtown Eastside space. “You knew we would always be there. Nobody had to make an appointment to come and play.”

The band admits to “winging it” at times — throwing in an E-bow here, a shaker or a pipe organ there — but the purpose was clear. It had to be when Case (who lives in Chicago) flew in for three days to lay down her parts or when the thicket of voices (including Nora O’Connor and Newman’s niece, Kathryn Calder) were added. “Vocally, I always wanted to get an Abba sound,” Collins says. “Some kind of weird blend, where you won’t know who’s the lead singer.”

It’s also part of a larger, planned effect where, as Collins says, you can “hear” the recording process — in the same way a painter might use their paint-mixing knife on the canvas instead of a brush. It isn’t about getting an accurate representation of a live band, he says, but making the brushstroke part of the final work.

Of course, there’s also a schoolboy’s delight in listening to Case’s voice on Bones of an Idol and These Are the Fables, or hearing Bejar rock out. “When we do a song like Streets of Fire, I really feel like the Byrds covering Dylan or something,” Newman says of the Bejar tune the band borrowed from the guitarist’s first solo album (as Destroyer), We’ll Build Them a Golden Bridge (1996). “It seems like a classic to me, because I’ve known it for so many years, yet nobody knows it. Because we all drifted in obscurity for so long, we’ve kind of got this large back catalogue of songs.”

Their future catalogue, on the other hand, is something that might be snapped up very soon. Twin Cinema is the group’s last album with Vancouver’s Mint Records, which in turn licenses it worldwide to New York’s Matador. After this, the New Pornographers will be free agents.

“Maybe somebody will offer us a ton of money,” Newman wonders, adding that he’s always seen Matador as his “dream label.” After its success with the New York band Interpol, Newman knows they can move records.

Indeed, you don’t need to spend much time with Newman to realize he’s got starry eyes. Fame? Fortune? Bring it on. He’s a student of success, but he isn’t about to turn this project mainstream.

The Pornographers’ models? The Flaming Lips or Yo La Tengo, he suggests, “bands that have been doing it for a long time, doing their thing regardless of what’s popular at the time, occasionally touching base with some trend, but not really — just building it slowly.”

Still, he wouldn’t shy away from a bit more popularity.

“Oh, yeah. It’s a good job being popular,” he says, tongue barely in cheek. “There’s a lot of money to be made before you lose your anonymity.”

He stops and thinks. “Plus, who cares if people occasionally stop you on the street. It’s not a problem for me whatsoever, in that it never happens.”

Greg Buium is a Vancouver writer.