Anyone who has heard the catchy melodies from Electric Version will immediately understand why almost every rock critic from Bristol to Brisbane has effusively declared The New Pornographers' second album "the ultimate soundtrack of summer."
With its hand-clapping beats, infectious guitar hooks and soaring Ooo-Ooo harmonies, Electric Version is the perfect music to blast out your car stereo when you're squealing the tires with the windows rolled down, bopping and grinding on the way to the beach.
Perfect, that is, unless you're Carl Newman, the master "melodian" who founded the Vancouver indie supergroup, writes the songs, sings the vocals, plays guitar and keyboards and speaks to the press. The ubiquitous reference is as vexing to Newman as the critics who insist on describing their sound as "bubblegum" pop.
"I don't think it's a happy record," says Newman, with a goofy lopsided grin that says the surf-and-sunshine analogies genuinely perplex him, but not disturbingly so.
"I think it's more a spring record," he adds wryly. "It has hope for the summer -- it's a record about searching for happiness."
Keep in mind, however, that the 35-year-old redhead sports a complexion so ghostly pale it would suggest he has spent most of his adult life, and probably his teen years too, shunning the light of day while seeking his own version of nirvana holed up in basement rehearsal rooms, plugged into windowless recording studios and cranking out the tunes in smoky bars.
Newman shrugs off the critics and their Hawaiian Tropic reviews as best he can. He learned long ago that it's sometimes better to simply bask in their praise than try to comprehend it.
"Our press is so arbitrary. If you sit down for two hours and read everything, it doesn't make any sense. It's like 'this record rules,' 'this record sucks,' 'they stuck to the formula,' 'a dramatic departure.'
"It's my fault for reading all this stuff," he adds. "I'm going to become one of those crazy shut-ins, and spend my life writing letters to rock critics."
Ah, well. If you ask Newman, he'll tell you he doesn't even understand how his band got this far in the first place.
It was three years ago when the New Pornographers burst onto the scene with a collection of buoyant power-pop called Mass Romantic. The album had been almost four years in the making, from the time Newman had first assembled the band in 1996 as a side project for a hodgepodge of friends with various backgrounds. The band included Newman, the principal songwriter, who, at the time, belonged to a promising pop outfit called Zumpano; country chanteuse Neko Case, who has since shot to indie fame with her solo projects; and "secret member" Dan Bejar, who contributes songs and vocals, but doesn't tour with the band and still belongs to the rock band Destroyer.
Rounding out the group was drummer Kurt Dahle and guitarist/keyboard player Todd Fancey, who both once rocked much harder in Limblifter; bassist John Collins, who came from the garage punk band The Evaporators; and Blaine Thurier, an award-winning filmmaker who had no previous musical experience, but was a good friend of Newman's so they let him be in the band.
"We didn't have any big plans," says Newman. "So I said [Thurier]could be the keyboard player because, uh, what else was he going to play?"
After years of co-ordinating conflicting schedules and tinkering in the studio, the New Pornographers finally released their first album to huge critical acclaim. Mass Romantic won the Juno for best alternative album in 2001, wound up on numerous critics' best-of-the-year lists, including The New York Times, sold out shows wherever they went and even scored a radio hit with the insanely catchy Letter To An Occupant.
"I don't know how that happened," says Newman, still scratching his head. "Whenever it played, it sounded like the weirdest song on radio."
Newman doesn't ever remember thinking the album would be popular. "I just remember wanting to finish it. . . . It was shocking how fast it all happened. In a period of six months, we went from complete obscurity, even here in Vancouver, to being in Rolling Stone and Spin. Everybody knew about us, all of a sudden. Well, not everyone. But you know what I mean."
Now the band is back with Electric Version. And the album is zipping along with even more exuberance -- sonically and critically -- than the first. Having already cracked the No. 2 position on Canadian and U.S. college radio charts, Electric Version continues to elicit ecstatic reviews as the band sets out on their North American tour. Tonight, they hit Toronto for a show at the Phoenix, then zig-zag across the U.S. for the rest of the summer, before heading to Europe in November.
Newman is already feeling dizzy from the whirlwind, saying the highlight so far was performing last month on Late Night with David Letterman. Well, kind of.
"We just wanted to play our song and not screw it up. I knew that footage would probably be hanging around my entire life. I didn't want it to be something I watched later and cringed, thinking: 'Why did I hit that wrong chord?'
"Sometimes when I'm watching, I think I hear someone playing the wrong chord. But I don't think it was me," he adds quickly.
Newman swears he's only replayed the video three times. "Well, technically I've seen it four times. But I was pretty drunk the first time we saw it on TV that night. We were in a karaoke bar. I don't remember it at all."
The singer suddenly stops, distracted by the song on the Starbucks stereo. "It's The Frames," he notes, blue eyes widening in recognition. "We toured with these guys. They're from Ireland. And now they've got a song on a Starbucks compilation. Good for them."
Newman says wouldn't mind the same good fortune himself. "Neko's been on three Starbucks compilations. But she realized recently that her mother is an organic coffee farmer in Hawaii and, politically, it's not such a good idea. She figured that out after being on three of them," he laughs.
Having an alt-country star in a power-pop band is an interesting contradiction in itself. The collaboration is great, says Newman, for the most part.
"Sometimes it makes our future very uncertain. We want to continue being a band, but we don't know if something's going to happen that will make it impossible. Is her next record going to come out and be a huge hit and she'll be so popular and busy that she can't do anything with us for the next two years? We're not going to sit around for two years and do nothing," he trails off.
Still, not having Neko around has led to some interesting technical innovations. Case's vocals for the song From Blown Speakers were recorded in Chicago about eight months before it was mixed. By the time Newman sat down to listen, the lyrics had changed, and it was too late for Case to rerecord.
"There was one line that was completely wrong," explains Newman. "So we basically took a line from another part of the song and reassembled it on the computer. There's still one word that's wrong. But you can't really tell."
The wonders of modern technology amaze Newman. And if you listen carefully to the lyrics, you'll realize it's a much more fitting theme than beach-blanket bingo -- even if he's reluctant to say so. "That's the worst part of being interviewed -- having to talk about the record," he says, only half-jokingly.
He bows to Laura Sinagra of the Village Voice. He says her review, which reverentially compares the New Pornographers to the White Stripes, is the one "really good" article he's read.
"Carl Newman's retrofitted hot spots aren't London '63 or Detroit '69," writes Sinagra. "More like San Francisco World's Fair 1915. Newman's utopia begins in the Gilded Age, at the dawn of the Ad Man, when capitalism wasn't the only game in town, and it had to bust its butt -- and yours -- to get a piece of the rock. His band's new record could easily be called Electric Virgin, or Electric Company, or General Electric. That's how excited Newman is to plug in. Picking up where 2000's exuberance-from-nowhere indie smash Mass Romantic left off, he's now head tour guide at a bygone Expo. And while everybody else there is, like, celebrating the opening of the Panama Canal, he's spinning us through gizmo heaven in a whir, swooning in awe at the popped lock-fuls of sounds 'streaming out of the magnets.' "
"Man," says Newman. "I wish I had been thinking all those things. She really got where the record was coming from and took it to another level."
He picks up the thread and tentatively starts discussing how difficult it is to create honest music today, when the message will inevitably be "mutated" in the studio and packaged into a "commodity" -- when he suddenly stops dead in his analytical tracks.
"See, now I'm talking about the record again and it's sounding incoherent. I've probably contradicted myself a few times already.
"I guess the message is: There's a lot of stupidity in the world. But hopefully, we won't be defeated. You have to hang on to the hope that the stupidity won't take over."
Or bury your message at the beach? "Yeah," laughs Newman. Not that he wants anyone to take him too seriously. "It also works for party music. This is an album for stoned people. Definitely."
After their Toronto date tonight, the New Pornographers play Quebec City Wednesday night.
Alexandra Gill