Matador Offices, NYC
Wednesday, June 18th, 2003
Words by Cameron Cook
Illustration by Marisa Brickman

Ok, so if we were playing Jeopardy, and I was Alec Trebek, and I asked you: “A Canadian super-group made up of musical pop maestros and a sultry alt-country diva” and you said: “the New Pornographers,” you would have totally won the “Great bands of North America for $600″ category had your response been in the form of a question.

The New Pornographers gained huge acclaim and a rabid fan-base as a result of their 2000 debut, Mass Romantic. The LP quickly became an indie staple, being added to mix tapes and burned onto iPods the globe over. The album has an infectious, bouncy feel to it, the 20-something equivalent to a jaunt in Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. The sun is a-shinin’, the birds are a-tweetin’, and frontman Carl Newman is the jolly mailman come to deliver sing-a-long vocals and highbrow lyrics. Dan Bejar (the band’s “secret member” and frontman for avant rock band Destroyer) would be the traveling magician dropping by for a cup of tea; Neko Case would play the role of the sun-kissed love interest, adding her breezy-but-powerful vocals to the mix.

It’s a surprise to no one that Matador snatched up the Porno’s for the release of their new album, Electric Version, an LP as brilliant in every aspect of the word as Mass Romantic. If you don’t have a copy yet, do yourself a favor: put this magazine down, and go buy one.

I chatted with John (bass) and Blaine (keyboards) the day after the band’s appearance on Late Show with David Letterman, at the Matador HQ.

What is new pornography? What’s wrong with old pornography?
Blaine: I dunno. We don’t really have anything to do with pornography. Not as a band, anyway. Individually we might have involvement in pornography, on a personal level (laughs). But the name is just a collection of words put together. It doesn’t really mean anything. It sounded kind of stupid and catchy, and we decided to use it.
John: The word came from a song that Dan wrote, years ago.
Blaine: The Pornographers is a Japanese novel and a really great movie. And Carl just wanted to put the word ‘new’ in something.
John: It’s not much of a story, really.

It’s kind of refreshing to see the New Pornographers strive to be a really good pop band while there are so many other bands in the States who are being different for the sake of being artsy.
John: That’s exactly what we’re trying to do, basically. We’ve come from a few different backgrounds where we were all into more or less pop music.
Blaine: We just basically play what we like, and we like pop music.
John: Sometimes you arrive at a point in your life where you’re like: ‘What do I really like? What would I actually really like to do?’ We get that sort of clarity – I think as you get older, personally, you stop second-guessing yourself and start thinking, ‘What do I think is really valuable? What would I try to do, what would I try to produce, if I could just sit back.’ You try to measure yourself against them, and try to attach yourself to them.
Blaine: Yeah, that’s the process. I don’t think of it as a conscious deliberate thing, as if we sat down and said: ‘We’re gonna do this.’ The songs kind of grew out of themselves, exactly in that way John described.

I think that, especially with young people, the word ‘pop’ has a stigma to it. Even when I play things like the Beach Boys, people my age will be like: ‘Ugh, how can you play this, it’s so old,’ and it’s, like, the goddamn Beach Boys!
Blaine: Yeah, why not draw on the entire spectrum, the entire history of music? You have so many more choices. It’s kind of funny that ‘pop’ music isn’t ‘popular,’ since that’s what it’s supposed to be.

When I was looking through some of the articles in your press release, I came across the expression ‘Carl’s big idea,’ or ‘Carl’s vision,’ concerning the formation of the band. How much of that is true? You were all in different bands, so did he just go on a mission and recruit everyone?
John: Well, he sort of did.
Blaine: Yeah, he did.
John: We were all friends, and we were spending a lot of time together already more or less. I didn’t spend a lot of time with Blaine, but I knew him pretty well, we saw each other at parties, but the other guys I saw a lot. I knew Dan from Destroyer. It was kind of like getting the posse together.
Blaine: Yeah, it was kind of like the Dirty Dozen.
John: That’s what I was trying to say. It’s pathetic that I couldn’t think of that. It was like that; we were all selected for our individual skills, or whatever.

Were you guys surprised when your first album got a lot of acclaim, that people just loved it and attached themselves to it? I know people who would hang themselves if their copy of Mass Romantic got scratched.
Blaine: Yes, really surprised. I remember when we were just finishing it, mixing it, and I said: “If this isn’t hugely popular, there is no justice in the world.” And Dan said, “And there is no justice in the world.” So that’s kind of how we expected it to go. We thought we’d made something really good, and we expected to be ignored. And we weren’t! I mean, we’re not driving Porches or anything, quitting our day jobs, but… (smiles)
John: I was surprised. When we finished it, we had a label deal, with Mint Records, but the advance was only $2,000 so I could buy a better computer to finish the record. I was really hoping that when we were done and it got pressed and sold, it did what I thought would be the ultimate, which would be to sell out of it’s 2,000 copies when it was pressed, in Canada. I didn’t even think of America. I thought that maybe 50 of those might get down to the States. I didn’t dare to hope for anything more than that. That was the limit of what I thought we might pull off with that record. I thought it was a really great record, but a lot of stuff I thought was great, that I’ve been involved with or heard it or whatever, has been completely ignored by the whole world. Not even been released on a label, just, like, not happened. We didn’t have our hopes set too high, really, even though we’re impressed with what we’ve done.

How do you think the band has evolved from the first album to the new one?
Blaine: Well, when the first album came out, we hadn’t played live with Neko. So in physical, personal kind of ways, we’ve evolved.
John: When we finished the first record, as I said, it really seemed like a project. It was a little experiment, just another musical endeavor. It wasn’t really like a job to anyone. So we kind of worked on the record like it was a sculpture for our selves, and spent a lot of time on it. Doing detailed things for no other real reason then I just wanted to try it. We were just kind of experimenting. We also weren’t expecting anyone ever to hear it. So it was just this fun project that we were working on. We’d never played live very much, and we had four songs in the can before we’d ever played a show. When the record started happening and the whole band started to tour and started to have to behave like a real band, our original drummer was sort of just gone, and now we have a really pro drummer Kurt who makes things happen. We now have the ability to become a tight ensemble, if we really try.

You just said there was a phase when the band was going from just making music to having to tour, having a strict schedule, crystallizing as a unit and such. Was that a very stressful time for the band? Or were you just evolving at a natural pace?
John: I’d say it was a very exciting time, and we’re kind of still [in that phase]. We’re still trying to figure out what it’s like to be a really pro band. In a funny way, all of our bands have just been such, kind of, jokes, in the past. Well, you know, not jokes, but not professional bands. Tours have been smaller, and there’s been no money involved, and a lot of just doing it because you love it.
Blaine: Yeah.
John: And this is a whole other ball of wax. It’s still-
Blaine: We really have to deliver.
John: Yeah.
Blaine: With this kind of tension, people come to our shows and expect to see something, and we have to deliver it. We’re getting used to that.
John: You can’t just all get wasted before you play on Letterman, you know? You just can’t. That’s a new feeling for us.

When people come to your live shows, what’s the typical reaction? Do you always ‘deliver’?
Blaine: Most of them have been drinking (laughs). Actually, there’s a lot of dancing. We want our shows to be a really good time. It’s great to see people dancing and smiling and laughing. If someone in the back just wants to sit and enjoy the music and contemplate, then we want that person to enjoy it equally.
John: For me, when we started doing this stuff, we had enough bang-heady little ideas, and that’s what become pop songs. You can just sort of relax. You’re not listening to pure thought, when you listen to one of our tunes. I think people like that. People feel a connection to us, like we’re not just throwing up some kind of dumb product for them to consume and forget about. It’s got some sustenance. We’re pretty determined that it’s gonna be just enjoyable, too. There’s that sort of freedom you get when you know that there’s substance to it. You’re almost not paying attention to it until you realize how dumb it is and how fun it is too, at the same time. It’s like a double-edged fun-sword.

Um…
John: I don’t know. I’m not making any sense.

Are you guys writing or recording any new material?
Blaine: John could probably answer that one.
John: Well, when we were doing this last record, we were working on 18 songs. I think in August we had 18 tunes on the go, and we had a deadline on when we wanted to finish the record. And I was telling Carl: ‘Ok, we have got to cut some songs like, now, before we spend the rest of out lives working on this project. We have to whittle it down to the album now, and then finish the songs and mix them.’ So it’s kind of lucky that we have five or six songs that are half done, and they could easily wind up being a huge chunk of the next record, or B-sides or whatever. Or at least excellent templates for reworking tunes. So in a way, we kind of got another record underway. In another way, I’m sure Carl has got tons of songs, he said he’s, you know, ready to start laying them on us. Oh, and there’s one we haven’t even started recording by Dan, that’s gonna absolutely be awesome. It’s going to be totally like, Zeppelin. [laughs] Late Zeppelin. It’s going to be great. Against Dan’s wishes, but it’s going to be like that. It’s going to be monstrous.
Blaine: What is this?
John: “Mad Boxes Song?”
Blaine: Oh, right…
John: It’s going to be like [imitates heavy, slow guitar riff]: “DUH, duh, duh… DUH, duh duh…” I think it’s just a hilarious thing to do, you know, try to sound like Zeppelin. What a joke. But we’re going to pull it off, and it’ll be awesome.