Their third disc is only just being released, and the New Pornographers’ mastermind is already talking about the next one.
"I think parts of it will be a little lower and more orchestral, and parts of it will sound like later-period Zeppelin," A.C. (Carl) Newman says over the phone from his Vancouver home. "I'm gonna try and fuse the two together.”
Suddenly, he seems to realize how peculiar this sounds. "We won't do anything stupid," he asserts. "You don't have to worry."
Worrying might be the natural response when faced with the prospect of beloved purveyors of indie-pop suddenly cranking out orchestral Zeppelin. But considering how they've managed to shift gears with Twin Cinema, released this week and already one of the most critically lauded discs of the year, they've probably earned the benefit of the doubt.
For fans of the Pornographers' first two albums, Mass Romantic and Electric Version, there's something comforting about Twin Cinema's title track. Leading off the disc, it's precisely the sort of sunny, hook-laden sound they made their name with.
It's also precisely what Newman wanted to get away from. Which is why, after that soothing start, devotees of the previous discs might be caught off guard.
"It made sense to bridge the gap," Newman says of the first track, "to go, 'here, we're the New Pornographers, but now we're going to take a left turn.' "
Not that the rest of Twin Cinema isn't identifiably the same band. There are still the same infectious melodies and riffs, still the same cryptic lyrics fired out by the trio of Newman, Dan Bejar and alt-country star Neko Case (along with Newman's niece, Kathryn Calder, pitching in for this first time), still the same inscrutably glossy production. But this is a more challenging, intermittently darker version of the band, less bound to its commitment to make airtight three-minute pop songs -- a band that can sound like straight-ahead Spoon on one track (Use It) and defy any easy comparisons on the next (Bleeding Heart Show), which starts off like an introspective ballad and builds to the most epic crescendo in the band's catalogue.
It's an identity Newman says has been lurking in the shadows all along.
"The part people like about us, which is that really poppy immediacy - I've never really thought it's our great strength," he says. "I think I always wanted to make records that are a little weirder, and yet we always get pigeonholed as being this kind of sugary power-pop band."
It was working on a solo project last year - something that Bejar, who claimed his usual minority stake by penning three of Twin Cinema's tracks, also did with Destroyer - that helped Newman bring that other side out.
"When we were making Electric Version, I would make notes about little demos I'd recorded, and go 'this is good, but not New Pornographers,' and I eventually thought I should put out a solo album because I've got all these songs that don't seem to fit in," he recalls. "But then, maybe that solo record had an influence on Twin Cinema - I think it's stretched out a little more, and it has mellower moments and stranger moments. And now it's wide open - pretty much anything goes on the New Pornographers records from here on in."
That there's even any question of having a formula to break out of speaks to an ascent none of the band’s members expected. This is an act, after all, that was initially nothing more than a lark for a few friends with musical careers already on the go.
"That's the thing that's great about us - we went into it with absolutely no delusions of success," Newman says. "When we met with Mint Records to put out Mass Romantic, they asked us if we were going to put out another album, and we shrugged and said 'I dunno.' And they asked if we were going to tour, and we thought, 'I dunno, probably not.' And the record came out, and just took on a life of its own."
Five years in, the joy of a New Pornographers' record is that Newman is still learning to use all the tools at his disposal - especially Case, who's gone from singing lead on a couple of tracks to sharing vocals on a whole bunch of them.
"I didn't really like the showcase thing, where all of a sudden the band changed completely and it was Neko,” he says. “I didn't want the record to be like, 'Here's Carl! Now here's Neko! Now here's Dan!' I wanted it to just sound like the same band playing.
"A lot of people are asking who's singing what on this record - they can't tell. I think that's good, because it doesn't really matter who's singing. We're just a band. It's the New Pornographers."
