№ 4

Newman sticks to the format 

The front man of the New Pornographers makes his solo debut and, not surprisingly, it sounds like the indie supergroup in miniature

THE GLOBE AND MAIL

Carl New­man, in the ear­ly days, liv­ing in Vancouver’s West End, meets a writer for lunch at the Sylvia Hotel.

Carl New­man still seems puz­zled by the nev­er-end­ing duties of the next indie-rock sensation.

After sit­ting for five phone inter­views in his West End apart­ment, the Van­cou­ver singer-song­writer arrived for his first face-to-face meet­ing a lit­tle dazed and a lit­tle unkempt, dressed in shades of green: army pants, T‑shirt flop­ping out. He’d for­got­ten a pho­tog­ra­ph­er would be waiting.

I feel like such an idiot when I’m get­ting my pic­ture tak­en,” New­man says, look­ing out toward Eng­lish Bay, cyclists and in-line skaters buzzing by. “Every­one must be think­ing to them­selves, ‘Who do you think you are? A mod­el or something?’ ”

For those in the know, how­ev­er, New­man is, indeed, some­one to watch.

As the founder and front­man of the indie super­group the New Pornog­ra­phers, his catchy, clev­er­ly craft­ed songs brought some­thing upbeat and uncom­pli­cat­ed to the alter­na­tive scene. 

It was pure pop con­cen­trate. Neat hooks and ooh-ooh har­monies car­ried us from the Go-Go’s to Elvis Costel­lo, while, visu­al­ly, New­man’s look mir­rored the music: clean-cut, col­lared shirt, all neat and tidy.

Now, in the mid­dle of pro­mot­ing his first solo album, The Slow Won­der (The Blue Cur­tain), New­man him­self is the cen­tre of atten­tion. Back home after the first leg of a 26-city North Amer­i­can tour, he’s being smoth­ered in praise: reviews in Rolling Stone and Bill­board, a pro­file in The New York Times Magazine.

Still, if this is Canada’s next, great pop export, he seems slight­ly out of sync.

It’s amaz­ing when I study my own psy­chol­o­gy,” he observes over a club­house sand­wich and water at a hotel restau­rant near his home.

In the last few years I’ve just got­ten so much of what I want. But then when you get there you just start look­ing for the next thing.… I’ve been doing okay, I’ve made a decent liv­ing for the last cou­ple years. At the same time, you’ve got to think it’s kind of short-lived. Who knows.”

Suc­cess is some­thing New­man, 36, pon­ders open­ly. Some­times, he appears ambiva­lent, detached, lost in a kind of nasal-voiced spaci­ness. He’ll roman­ti­cize what a nor­mal life might look like, then he’ll seem elat­ed by the recognition.

Clear­ly, he’s fond of the details.

He’s up to date on album sales. He runs his own label. And he reads every­thing writ­ten about him. Yet his deliv­ery is so unas­sum­ing, it’s hard to believe he’s been plan­ning ahead.

Just ask where he got the idea for a solo album. Ini­tial­ly, he sug­gests it came out of the blue. Then, he explains. “I want­ed to be busy,” he says, refer­ring to last autumn after the Pornog­ra­phers’ sum­mer tour ended.

I want­ed to approach music with more of a work eth­ic than I ever had in the past.… Either I could get a job doing some­thing else or I could try and con­tin­ue mak­ing music and make that my job.”

New­man’s last day job — at a local gui­tar-mak­er — was jet­ti­soned near­ly three years ago after the Pornog­ra­phers’ first disc, Mass Roman­tic, brought them heaps of attention.

There was a Juno, rave reviews and a now leg­endary appear­ance with Ray Davies of the Kinks at the South by South­west Fes­ti­val in Austin, Tex. 

The group’s sec­ond disc, Elec­tric Ver­sion, which came out last year, has sold near­ly 80,000 units in North America.

New­man’s debut, not sur­pris­ing­ly, feels like the Pornog­ra­phers in minia­ture: bright, fas­tid­i­ous pop, played straight by tight, four-to-eight-piece groups. That the dis­c’s 11 songs clock in at 33 min­utes isn’t a coin­ci­dence. In New­man’s world, grav­i­ty pulls in three-minute intervals.

Years ago I sud­den­ly real­ized I did­n’t feel the need to push any bound­aries,” he says. “Some­times I think it’s like work­ing in haikus or some­thing. I know I’m work­ing with­in a for­mat. Maybe it’s just because I’m lim­it­ed by my own abil­i­ties, but it’s also a for­mat that I real­ly like.”

That for­mat might stretch from the Bea­t­les to the Clash, from Love to Cheap Trick. While he admits he did­n’t become a “music geek” until his mid-teens, he seems to car­ry reams of his­to­ry in his head.

On tour recent­ly, a mem­ber of his band brought along the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds.

I real­ized how amaz­ing that record is. I’ve always known that, but I had­n’t lis­tened to it in a while. It just floors me. But it’s such a cliché to say you like the [Bea­t­les’] White Album or Pet Sounds.… It’s like being a Chris­t­ian and say­ing, ‘You know who’s great? Jesus.’ Noth­ing needs to be said.”

But if New­man’s music some­times sounds won­der­ful­ly famil­iar, his off­beat lyrics often send you away to think.

Take Slow Won­der’s sin­gle, “Mir­a­cle Drug,” a sto­ry, seem­ing­ly, about a failed writer: “He was tied to the bed with a mir­a­cle drug in one hand, / In the oth­er, a great lost nov­el, that I under­stand, was returned with a stamp / That said, ‘Thank you for your inter­est, young man.’ ” 

Bub­blegum it isn’t. And with­in the obscure scenes, there is often a real sense of melan­choly, some­thing peo­ple often passed over with the Pornographers.

On one lev­el, “Drink to Me, Babe, Then,” for instance, is a sim­ple breakup song; on anoth­er, it’s sophis­ti­cat­ed, social commentary.

Come to me, please, all these years fall through, / Through the cracks and now this per­fect view, / On the upside, both sides win. / On the down­side, we buy, we pull through / Through the pour­ing choic­es rich kids choose / On a land­slide you ride in / Drink to me, babe, then.”

New­man admits there’s part of him here, “a sad, closed-off part,” and he thinks his next project might even exam­ine this “solemn, mel­low­er side.”

I’ve done the bop­py records that peo­ple love, but I might change it up.”

With Slow Won­der, chang­ing it up actu­al­ly meant chang­ing his name: the disc is list­ed under A.C. Newman.

I like the way it sounds,” he says of his ini­tials. “A.C. New­man seems more excit­ing some­how. It’s a pseu­do­nym, and it’s not.”

Recent­ly, peo­ple have even start­ed call­ing him by his new stage name.

That makes me feel uncom­fort­able,” he says. “It makes me feel like an idiot. A.C.? Who goes by their initials?”

Per­haps, he should get used to it. The first leg of his tour, which kicked off in Edmon­ton and trav­elled to Cal­gary and Saska­toon, includ­ed a per­for­mance on McEn­roe, the for­mer ten­nis star’s new talk show.

Some­times it’s sur­re­al when I think about the things that I’ve done,” he says, refer­ring to his pre­vi­ous TV per­for­mance, on David Let­ter­man’s show last year with the New Pornog­ra­phers. “It’s some­thing I just shrug at these days.”