New Pornographers: Carl Newman Interview + New Album Details

The New Pornographers' Carl Newman spoke to Pitchfork about the band's new album slated to be called Challengers. Expect to see it this summer (August?) as mixing of the record is about to begin. This is my favourite line from the P4K interview with Mr Newman: We're like Fleetwood Mac if Dylan joined. There are a couple more snippets from the interview below...

Also, a song mentioned in the interview is "The Bleeding Heart Show" from Twin Cinema, here's an mp3 to refresh your memory

the bleeding heart show [mp3]
BUY The New Pornographers music.


Song titles:

CARL NEWMAN: Well, Dan's songs are called "Myriad Harbor" and "Entering White Cecilia" and "The Spirit of Giving", which first showed up as a Sub Pop single b-side years ago, which never got released, so it seemed safe to do it again. What else is there? A song called "All These Things That Go to Make Heaven and Earth" and "Go Places", there's a song called "Challengers", and there's a song called "All the Old Showstoppers". That's all I can think of right now.

The sound of the new record:

CARL NEWMAN: It definitely sounds like something that, when it's quiet, I think it's much quieter than it ever has been, to the point that there are actually songs that don't really have any drums. Or, a song that has no drums for the first half, but then the drums come in, and even then they don't come in that much. There's a little more instrumentation than we've really tried having before. We brought in a string quartet, and there's actually flute on it, there's going to be a little bit of trumpet.

On another solo record:

CARL NEWMAN: It's something I want to try and do-- I'm thinking I wouldn't mind doing a pseudo-Astral Weeks record, where you just bring in a bunch of really shit hot players and get them to play. It won't be nearly as good as Astral Weeks-- let me preface that by saying it won't be 1/100th as good as Astral Weeks-- but I'm kind of fascinated by the idea of surrounding myself with just really, really good players, just playing songs and seeing what comes out.

Read the interview