How the New Pornographers find stability amid churn
West Coast music collective New Pornographers find harmony in instability
The New Pornographers are a collective with a regular ebb and flow of band members. The multi-city band finds strength, and new ideas, through its ever-growing roster. (Latest touring member, singer and violinist Simi Stone, joined in 2015.)
It’s a strange thing, then, to picture longtime member Kathryn Calder holed up at home by herself, recording vocals away from the band’s other members. As the New Pornographers scrambled to finish their latest record Whiteout Conditions, she took advantage of a little solitude.
“When you’re doing the more creative things like fiddling with harmonies or delays or reverb I like being able to experiment without needing to show anybody the path that it took to the end result,” she said. “Sometimes it can be kind of wacky and not sound very good, but you know there’s something there you can work with. You modify and modify and modify until you have something that sounds really good.”
In the past, Calder always recorded with either band founder Carl Newman or original member John Collins, but deciding to do things in her own space was not only a creatively fulfilling choice, but a practical one. The band formed in Vancouver. Half of the band, including Calder, still lives there. Other members live hundreds of kilometres away.
Ongoing members like Neko Case and Dan Bejar sometimes take time away from the band to work on other music. That doesn’t mean they won’t return. Bejar and longtime drummer Kurt Dahle are absent on a recording for the first time. Case’s signature voice can be heard on several songs but she’s not touring with the band. But at the core of everything is a group of people who, no matter which cooks are in the kitchen, continues to put out great albums.
Whiteout Conditions came out just in time for the April thaw. The band spent most of the summer touring, sharing the same physical space once more, sharing new songs with audiences and sharing the kind of moments only a touring band experiences.
One memorable night this summer came during a July show in Charlotte. The New Pornographers shared a bill with Spoon. Five songs in, Calder remembers looking up at a sky full of dark, ominous clouds.
“The next moment the power went out on stage. There had been a lightning strike close by and it cut all the power to the stage,” she said.
On a stage covered with electrical equipment, the show couldn’t go on. Both band and audience were evacuated indoors. Later, Spoon performed a few acoustic songs for fans who waited it out.
This fall, the band moves to indoor venues on a headlining tour of Canada. Calder said it’s been nice to add the tunes from Whiteout Conditions, particularly one of her favourites, Avalanche Alley.
“It’s one of those ones where you almost have to be careful where you put it in the set because it will make your other fast songs seem slow comparatively. That one is really fun because it has a beat that has this tension that propels the song,” she said. “It also has some fun shouty moments. I like it when I get to yell. There’s something cathartic about being on stage and getting to belt with four other singers at the same time.”
The songs on Whiteout Conditions are fast, loud and buoyant, building on an energy found in the band’s last record Brill Bruisers.
“Carl wanted this record to be really upbeat so he wanted a certain BPM and to try and keep all the songs within this framework,” Calder said.
This tour features a seven-musician lineup of Calder, Newman, Collins, Stone, Joe Sieders, Todd Fancey and Blaine Thurier. It stands to reason the next tour’s lineup could be different.
“The nature of our band is that it’s ever-evolving and that’s a really cool thing,” said Calder. “I hope maybe people are used to that with our band.”