Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / The New Pornographers

Transcript

The New Pornographers · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin.
0:20
Speaker 2: The New Pornographers have never been easy to pin down.
0:23
Speaker 2: Since forming in Vancouver in the late nineties, the band
0:25
Speaker 2: became one of the defining acts of the Canadian indie
0:28
Speaker 2: rock explosion, the part of a scene that also produced
0:30
Speaker 2: Nico Case Destroyer and a generation of artists who seemed
0:34
Speaker 2: to operate entirely outside the commercial mainstream. Co founders Carl
0:38
Speaker 2: Newman and Katherine Calder have spent more than two decades
0:41
Speaker 2: making records that are densely layered, relentlessly melodic, and somehow
0:45
Speaker 2: both euphoork and melancholic at the same time. Their latest album,
0:50
Speaker 2: The Former Site Of draws on a different kind of
0:52
Speaker 2: raw material. Part of it came from a friend's terminal
0:56
Speaker 2: illness in the weight of watching someone you love recking
0:58
Speaker 2: with time running out. Part of it came from something
1:01
Speaker 2: more unexpected, the last remaining payphone in New York City,
1:05
Speaker 2: which became a kind of anchor image for the record,
1:07
Speaker 2: a physical object standing in for everything we hold on
1:11
Speaker 2: to after it stops being useful. On today's episode, Bruce
1:15
Speaker 2: headlam sits down with Carl Newman and Katherine call There
1:18
Speaker 2: to talk about what their new album came from. What
1:21
Speaker 2: it's like to make something beautiful out of grief, and
1:23
Speaker 2: how the Canadian music scene that shaped them still runs
1:26
Speaker 2: through everything they do. This is Broken Record, real musicians,
1:33
Speaker 2: real conversations. Here's Bruce Headlam with Carl Newman and Catherine
1:41
Speaker 2: call There. Head over to YouTube dot com slash Broken
1:44
Speaker 2: Record Podcast if you want to see the video.
1:48
Speaker 1: So tell me first of all about the name of
1:50
Speaker 1: the new album and explain that to me. The former
1:53
Speaker 1: site of well this is I.
1:55
Speaker 3: Have a great answer. I have a great answer. It's
1:57
Speaker 3: kind of a long answer. Living in upstate New York,
2:00
Speaker 3: I would drive past the reservoirs they you know, which
2:04
Speaker 3: is where in New York City water comes from the
2:07
Speaker 3: Kren Reservoir, the nearby the one near us ya Choken
2:10
Speaker 3: Reservoir has a sign next to it that says the
2:13
Speaker 3: former site of West Hurley. And when I saw that sign,
2:16
Speaker 3: I was kind of fascinated, like what happened to West Hurley?
2:19
Speaker 3: And I started looking into the history, and around like
2:22
Speaker 3: nineteen oh five, New York decided, you know, we need
2:26
Speaker 3: these areas for the reservoirs. So they they got towns
2:30
Speaker 3: to just uproot and leave, and they said, we'll buy
2:34
Speaker 3: your property. But if you won't sell it to us,
2:36
Speaker 3: well we're going to take it anyway, so you might
2:37
Speaker 3: as well sell it to us. So parts of the
2:42
Speaker 3: towns just got raised, and then anything they wanted to say,
2:45
Speaker 3: they put the cars on wagons or sorry the they
2:49
Speaker 3: put the buildings on wagons, and it took them away.
2:51
Speaker 4: And so.
2:55
Speaker 3: I was I was fascinated by the idea, and I
2:58
Speaker 3: wrote the song the Former Site of about that, which is,
3:02
Speaker 3: you know, about a church, about a preacher who decides
3:07
Speaker 3: he's going to stay with the church. It's like, I'm
3:09
Speaker 3: just gonna and the water is rising around him and
3:12
Speaker 3: he's sitting on the roof and he's about to die
3:14
Speaker 3: because he's going to be flooded. And I thought that
3:19
Speaker 3: was an interesting little story to try and tell. And
3:25
Speaker 3: I also I also thought, like with all the changes
3:28
Speaker 3: the bands have gone has gone through through the years,
3:33
Speaker 3: to call our record the former site of and on
3:35
Speaker 3: the record it basically reads us the former site of
3:38
Speaker 3: the New Pornographers.
3:40
Speaker 4: I thought I thought it was a.
3:42
Speaker 3: Kind of you know, it was a slight slightly slightly ironic,
3:47
Speaker 3: but an element of truth there about you know, various
3:51
Speaker 3: things that have changed through the years, good and bad,
3:54
Speaker 3: and and also just my my urge to always want
3:59
Speaker 3: to change, you know, like I want I want the
4:03
Speaker 3: pornographers to be something different. But the the weird ps
4:09
Speaker 3: to that story, that is, we just played WDST, a
4:14
Speaker 3: radio station outside of Woodstock, and it's in a church,
4:19
Speaker 3: and I found out right before we started playing that
4:24
Speaker 3: it was a church that had actually been moved from
4:27
Speaker 3: West Hurley.
4:28
Speaker 5: Wow.
4:28
Speaker 3: So it was essentially we were playing we were playing
4:33
Speaker 3: this song about the church in West Hurley inside that
4:36
Speaker 3: actual church that used to be in West Hurley, which
4:40
Speaker 3: I thought was kind of mind blowing.
4:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, for people like me who bought your first album
4:45
Speaker 1: when it came out and been following you along, tell
4:47
Speaker 1: me what's changed in your songwriting between those early days
4:53
Speaker 1: and this new album.
4:57
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I know what's changed in my songwriting
5:00
Speaker 3: in the last few years. I think I decided to
5:03
Speaker 3: write very narrative songs on this album, or a lot
5:09
Speaker 3: a lot more narrative songs, songs that were clear, not
5:14
Speaker 3: like I'm trying to write Glory Days by Springsteen or anything,
5:17
Speaker 3: but I just wanted songs that were a little clearer.
5:19
Speaker 3: I think I think if i've if I was trying
5:22
Speaker 3: to write like anyone. I'd say Leonard Cohen, you know,
5:26
Speaker 3: like the the pictures he paints in like Suzanne or
5:31
Speaker 3: Sisters of Mercy, which is a kind of high thing
5:35
Speaker 3: to shoot for. But you got to shoot for something high,
5:38
Speaker 3: and so that's different to me. And also I'm I
5:43
Speaker 3: know how to I never used to know anything about engineering.
5:47
Speaker 3: I used to stand behind John Collins, our bass player,
5:50
Speaker 3: and say do this, do this?
5:51
Speaker 4: Can you make it? Do this? And and now I
5:54
Speaker 4: can do a lot of that stuff on my own.
5:58
Speaker 3: Which I love because it means like I can, you know,
6:02
Speaker 3: any given day, I can just go to my studio
6:04
Speaker 3: space and just work for a couple hours and engineer,
6:08
Speaker 3: and like, I can do everything now except play instruments. Well,
6:14
Speaker 3: but it's rock and roll music, so I can get
6:17
Speaker 3: away with not doing that. And plus I have other
6:19
Speaker 3: people that can play instruments. Well.
6:23
Speaker 1: That's interesting because this album, to me was the writing
6:27
Speaker 1: felt different, not on every song, but.
6:29
Speaker 4: Oh to me, it feels very different. Yeah.
6:31
Speaker 1: But you know, the I think of your songs, you know,
6:35
Speaker 1: particularly on your big albums like Real Bruisers or Morse Code,
6:42
Speaker 1: they're very linear songs. They start with a big hook,
6:46
Speaker 1: they go to you know, verse chorus, middle eight, They're
6:50
Speaker 1: often quite different. This one felt like it was built differently,
6:53
Speaker 1: Like it was built in layers. Almost.
6:57
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that.
6:58
Speaker 3: I mean, I like, I don't. I wouldn't call it
7:02
Speaker 3: a concept album, but I think I wanted it to
7:06
Speaker 3: all fit together. I wanted it to I wanted to
7:10
Speaker 3: have a similar feel. I wanted it lyrically and have
7:13
Speaker 3: a similar feel. I mean, even to the extent that
7:16
Speaker 3: the final song, the former site of like name checks
7:21
Speaker 3: characters from the previous songs, like I just wanted to have,
7:27
Speaker 3: you know, I think I've said to people I wanted
7:28
Speaker 3: it to feel a little bit like a little book
7:30
Speaker 3: of short stories. But that feels like a slightly pretentious
7:33
Speaker 3: thing to say. But that's I guess you gotta.
7:38
Speaker 4: Shoot for maximum, you know, pretense.
7:41
Speaker 1: It's a very pretentious thing. Yes, that's what makes it work. Yes, well,
7:47
Speaker 1: some of you. Some of these songs reminded me of
7:50
Speaker 1: particular short stories. The I want to get the title right,
7:56
Speaker 1: and I always write these things down. Wish you could
7:59
Speaker 1: see me. I'm killing it. Tell me about that song.
8:02
Speaker 3: I mean that one is essentially just something very real
8:06
Speaker 3: that happened and I think I just fictionalized slightly, and
8:11
Speaker 3: it was both of my parents have passed away, and
8:14
Speaker 3: a few years ago I was at the flower store
8:17
Speaker 3: and you're the graveyard, the cemetery, and I was buying
8:22
Speaker 3: flowers and I got this really nice, you know, bouquet
8:26
Speaker 3: from my mom, and then I was looking for my dad,
8:28
Speaker 3: and I started thinking, like, he didn't care about flowers,
8:32
Speaker 3: you know, so I bought him.
8:34
Speaker 4: I bought him like flowers and were quite as nice as.
8:37
Speaker 3: My mom's, because I just thought like he he doesn't care,
8:42
Speaker 3: like my dad would be like, no, what are you
8:43
Speaker 3: spending flowers? You know, why would you spend forty dollars
8:46
Speaker 3: getting me flowers? Get those ones that are on sale.
8:49
Speaker 4: And and then.
8:51
Speaker 3: That just made it just made me think about how
8:53
Speaker 3: we talk I guess how we talked to the dead,
8:55
Speaker 3: which is even a line one of one of the
8:58
Speaker 3: last lines in the Former Sight of.
9:01
Speaker 4: We find our own ways to talk to the dead.
9:04
Speaker 3: And then from there I started thinking about you know,
9:08
Speaker 3: it was a song, It was a song about that,
9:11
Speaker 3: but then it became more about this person who's who
9:17
Speaker 3: has spent so long buying flowers for his parents' graves
9:22
Speaker 3: that he knows a lot about flowers now, and he
9:25
Speaker 3: can and he can tell you, and he can tell
9:27
Speaker 3: you about flower arranging. So there there's something kind of darkly,
9:33
Speaker 3: darkly comic in there, but it's also meant to.
9:35
Speaker 4: Be kind of a knife to the gut.
9:38
Speaker 5: You know.
9:38
Speaker 3: It's one of the few songs I think I've ever written.
9:41
Speaker 3: I almost like made myself cry writing it.
9:45
Speaker 4: And it's also the line like I wish you could
9:48
Speaker 4: see me I'm killing it is a little.
9:50
Speaker 3: Like like I'm not exactly sure what I meant, you know,
9:55
Speaker 3: Like it means both I wish you could see everything
10:01
Speaker 3: I've done, but it also it also means.
10:05
Speaker 4: I'm kind of you know, I don't think I'm killing it.
10:09
Speaker 4: M M, I give you some help.
10:13
Speaker 1: But yeah, what came across to me was the narrator
10:16
Speaker 1: felt a little foolish, a little overwhelmed.
10:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think, I think, I think, I think
10:23
Speaker 3: there's that. But yeah, that was yeah that I felt
10:29
Speaker 3: very happy about that, that song.
10:31
Speaker 1: You know what it reminded me of, And now that
10:33
Speaker 1: I know the origin of the song has nothing to
10:35
Speaker 1: do with it. The James Joyce story. Araby, do you
10:39
Speaker 1: know that story?
10:39
Speaker 2: No?
10:39
Speaker 1: No, Oh, it's in Dubliner's it's a kid who goes
10:43
Speaker 1: to a little fair to buy a present for this
10:45
Speaker 1: girly lins and it's he's overwhelmed. It's getting dark, the
10:50
Speaker 1: fair is closing and he can't buy anything, and he
10:53
Speaker 1: just there's this terrible line at the end when he
10:56
Speaker 1: feels like, I think a creature, a creature derided by vanity.
11:00
Speaker 1: I think is the line, and just kind of that
11:03
Speaker 1: sense of being a little overwhelmed.
11:05
Speaker 3: That's I think. I think, I think there is that.
11:08
Speaker 3: I think there is that that element of it. Yeah,
11:13
Speaker 3: because that ultimately I didn't I don't know anything about flowers,
11:17
Speaker 3: you know, but uh but I guess this character I
11:20
Speaker 3: was trying to write kind of kind of does.
11:23
Speaker 1: Did writing more narratively Did that change the melody writing
11:28
Speaker 1: at all?
11:29
Speaker 4: It did? We were just talking about that last night.
11:34
Speaker 3: I think I just became less precious about melody or
11:39
Speaker 3: like like I would write a melody and then when
11:43
Speaker 3: the melody met the lyrics, when the melody met the lyrics,
11:46
Speaker 3: and when they both met performance, like whatever I had
11:51
Speaker 3: to change to make it feel better.
11:52
Speaker 4: I would.
11:55
Speaker 1: Is that different for you before you came?
11:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I I think I as used to
11:58
Speaker 3: think like, this is this is the melody I wrote,
12:01
Speaker 3: and sometimes it'd be like it's hard to sing. It's like, well,
12:04
Speaker 3: you know, I guess I will go into falsetto and
12:06
Speaker 3: sing it, you know, like like I I would bend
12:09
Speaker 3: around whatever the melody was in this one, and maybe
12:13
Speaker 3: on the last one as well, and then the one
12:17
Speaker 3: before that. I think I think about a few years ago,
12:18
Speaker 3: I started thinking, just changed the melody and just sing
12:23
Speaker 3: what feels good. The first song I remember doing that
12:26
Speaker 3: on was a song called falling down the Stairs of
12:30
Speaker 3: Your Smile from Morse Code to Break Lights. I remember
12:35
Speaker 3: I wasn't sure about it and then I just I
12:40
Speaker 3: just sang. I just sang it again. I just wanted
12:42
Speaker 3: to find it. Yeah, because I remember that I wanted
12:44
Speaker 3: to drop it. I was in her her husband call
12:47
Speaker 3: and mixed it and I remember saying like this isn't
12:51
Speaker 3: working on to drop in him turning around, going this
12:53
Speaker 3: is the best song on the record, and I said, okay,
12:56
Speaker 3: well I guess I should finish it, and yeah, and
12:58
Speaker 3: I just I just I just sang it until I
13:01
Speaker 3: found something that felt good singing, and I thought, and
13:04
Speaker 3: then that really worked. It became like the single and
13:06
Speaker 3: I think it was the best song on the record,
13:08
Speaker 3: and and I think I carried that into continue as
13:14
Speaker 3: a guest. And on this record, I mean, there's an
13:16
Speaker 3: infinite amount of melodies. I mean it's nice, it's maddening,
13:21
Speaker 3: but it's just there are.
13:23
Speaker 4: So many melodies, Like why not change the melody? It's like.
13:28
Speaker 1: Before, were you, uh we a writer who just got
13:32
Speaker 1: the harmony down for the song and then pulled the
13:34
Speaker 1: melody out of that.
13:37
Speaker 4: I don't know. I think it usually started with a melody.
13:41
Speaker 1: Really yeah, It's like.
13:42
Speaker 3: Like chords and a melody are or sometimes I would
13:48
Speaker 3: just kind of sing something just like into my into
13:53
Speaker 3: my phone, into my voice notes, and and then I'd
13:57
Speaker 3: go and play the chords, Go what are the chords
13:59
Speaker 3: of this? Sometimes I hate to find out what the
14:02
Speaker 3: chords are. Sometimes it ruins it really. Sometimes you think
14:06
Speaker 3: you've come up with something really interesting. It's like, oh,
14:09
Speaker 3: the chords are G, C and D. That's so boring.
14:13
Speaker 3: But then it's amazing when you realize, oh, yeah, the
14:18
Speaker 3: chords are C minor and A minor.
14:21
Speaker 4: That's weird. You know.
14:24
Speaker 1: This album also felt a little fewer chords in this album,
14:28
Speaker 1: maybe a little less harmonically complex earlier album.
14:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that, although there's still when I when
14:37
Speaker 3: I play the songs now, there's more chords than I
14:40
Speaker 3: think there are, like you know, like for for us,
14:45
Speaker 3: like a song that doesn't have very many chords is
14:47
Speaker 3: six chords, you know, but you know, lou Reid said
14:52
Speaker 3: any more than two chords is jazz. So I'm I
14:57
Speaker 3: think another thing I've done and tried to do in
15:00
Speaker 3: the last decade was just see how much you can
15:04
Speaker 3: move around with not very many chords, because you know,
15:11
Speaker 3: just like there are infinite amounts of melodies, there are
15:14
Speaker 3: kind of infinite places you can go within two chords.
15:20
Speaker 3: Like sometimes I just like the cycle back and forth
15:24
Speaker 3: between like G and A just two chords that are
15:27
Speaker 3: just a step apart, and there's so much you can do.
15:32
Speaker 3: You know, you can write, you can write a hundred
15:34
Speaker 3: songs that are different that are just cycling back and
15:37
Speaker 3: forth between A G. There's so many things you can change,
15:40
Speaker 3: the tempo, the way it's syncopated, the melody, just the vibe.
15:47
Speaker 1: It's great to hear you say that, because I think
15:49
Speaker 1: a lot of musicians fear the opposite, that they only
15:53
Speaker 1: know a few chords, there are only twelve notes. Maybe
15:58
Speaker 1: it's all been done well.
16:01
Speaker 3: I that really annoys me, you know, I think it's
16:07
Speaker 3: just laziness, you know. I think if you can't figure
16:12
Speaker 3: out how to do it, and you don't want to
16:13
Speaker 3: figure out how to do it, I don't know what
16:15
Speaker 3: to tell you.
16:15
Speaker 4: You know.
16:17
Speaker 1: Do you work hard at songwriting just something you do
16:20
Speaker 1: every day?
16:21
Speaker 4: Yeah? I do. I try to.
16:24
Speaker 3: I mean I feel like it's part of like I
16:27
Speaker 3: think it's part of like, you know, mental health process,
16:30
Speaker 3: you know, Like I think I think it's good just
16:32
Speaker 3: to to use your brain. You know, like in some
16:37
Speaker 3: ways it doesn't feel that dissimilar to going on in
16:39
Speaker 3: New York Times spelling bee, you know, like like like
16:44
Speaker 3: I'm trying to find an answer, you know, like I've
16:47
Speaker 3: but it's a puzzle. It's a puzzle I invented, you know.
16:50
Speaker 3: It's it's a it's an amorphis puzzle that I invented.
16:53
Speaker 3: And I'm like, how do you solve this puzzle? And like,
16:56
Speaker 3: I know there's an answer.
16:57
Speaker 1: Yeah. By the way, the panagram today is befouled. Just
17:00
Speaker 1: want you to know I know that I've already done it. Okay, Well,
17:02
Speaker 1: there you go.
17:03
Speaker 3: Genius by the way, not Queen Bee. But it was
17:06
Speaker 3: a pretty easy one today.
17:08
Speaker 1: Yeah hard.
17:11
Speaker 2: We'll be back with more from the New Pornographers after
17:13
Speaker 2: the break.
17:17
Speaker 1: So, Catherine, when you saw these songs, could you present
17:21
Speaker 1: them to the band? Right?
17:23
Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah, well altogether.
17:26
Speaker 1: No, But what did you think? What was what was
17:27
Speaker 1: your first reaction and what did you think you could add?
17:32
Speaker 6: I don't know, I just I I guess I approached
17:37
Speaker 6: these songs when Carl sends them to me with a
17:41
Speaker 6: kind of a sense of I'll just do what comes
17:45
Speaker 6: to me, and I'll send it back.
17:47
Speaker 4: And we'll see how it goes.
17:49
Speaker 6: Knowing that, knowing that, you know, I think a lot
17:51
Speaker 6: of things are going to change between the time I've
17:55
Speaker 6: listened to that version of the song and the final version.
17:58
Speaker 6: Because I've been in a band with Carl for over
18:00
Speaker 6: twenty years now, Yeah, and I know the process and
18:03
Speaker 6: the process itself hasn't changed that much. No, like over
18:07
Speaker 6: the you know, except from now. You know, I'm more
18:09
Speaker 6: able to do things from my own house, which is
18:13
Speaker 6: awesome because it means I have more personal control over
18:18
Speaker 6: what I'm doing and my knowledge has increased. Like to
18:21
Speaker 6: be able to do that kind of like you're you
18:23
Speaker 6: were just saying, you know, you can record on your own,
18:27
Speaker 6: and now so can I. And that wasn't the case
18:29
Speaker 6: when I first joined the band, so so that personally
18:33
Speaker 6: has changed. But yeah, I just expect unexpected twists and
18:38
Speaker 6: turns and adjust accordingly, and.
18:42
Speaker 4: I love it and it usually comes.
18:44
Speaker 3: Like I think Catherine and Todd, Fancy and John Collins,
18:48
Speaker 3: I mean, I think they all kind of.
18:50
Speaker 4: Like know.
18:52
Speaker 3: How I work or not, maybe not how I want
18:55
Speaker 3: to work, but just how I'm doomed to work. And
18:58
Speaker 3: they they will they will always send me like a
19:01
Speaker 3: bunch of ideas for a song, Like Fancy never gives
19:04
Speaker 3: me a full take, like he will play a cool
19:06
Speaker 3: guitar part and it only is only in the first
19:09
Speaker 3: forty five seconds because I think he knows, like, like
19:13
Speaker 3: what's the point. Like like if I if I find
19:16
Speaker 3: something that he did that I totally love, I will
19:18
Speaker 3: go back and go, can you do a full take
19:21
Speaker 3: of that? And usually I will like paste it up
19:23
Speaker 3: and and I'll do that with.
19:24
Speaker 4: Something Catherine plays or John plays. I'll just be this is.
19:29
Speaker 3: Cool, and sometimes it's sometimes it changes the song. Sometimes
19:33
Speaker 3: I'll go like that's the only good thing that keyboard
19:36
Speaker 3: thing Catherine did is the only good thing in the song.
19:38
Speaker 3: You know, I'll be like the keyboard you got, so
19:41
Speaker 3: we got the keyboard and the and the beat, and you.
19:44
Speaker 4: Know it's just you know, yeah, they're just you know,
19:49
Speaker 4: they're like tools.
19:52
Speaker 1: What was the song on this album that underwent the
19:54
Speaker 1: biggest transformation once people got their parts back to you?
19:59
Speaker 4: I have no idea. I cannot remember.
20:06
Speaker 3: It's it's I think it's always It's like it's it
20:12
Speaker 3: goes on for so long and I'm always like working
20:14
Speaker 3: on things, and you know, they don't remember, you know, I'm.
20:18
Speaker 6: Sure maybe Spooky Action.
20:21
Speaker 3: Spooky Action went. Yeah, that went through a big transformation. Actually,
20:24
Speaker 3: that that one, that one definitely did. Yes, I'm glad
20:31
Speaker 3: you caught that one.
20:34
Speaker 4: I remember that.
20:35
Speaker 3: That That one felt like it was like it was
20:37
Speaker 3: hard to get it like it was a lot of
20:42
Speaker 3: things happening, but it was it was hard to to
20:45
Speaker 3: make it smooth and and interesting. And sometimes you get
20:50
Speaker 3: to a point where you have too many ideas. At
20:52
Speaker 3: the end of an album, I feel like there's a
20:54
Speaker 3: lot of muting.
20:56
Speaker 1: You're taking things out. Yeah, do you do that more? Now?
21:01
Speaker 1: This album felt a little area or a little less yeah, yeah, yeah,
21:05
Speaker 1: a little less heavy, complicated and some of your other records.
21:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, but but I think ironically, I think that kind
21:13
Speaker 3: of makes it a little more, a little more complicated,
21:16
Speaker 3: you know. I think it's uh, it's just less less noisy. Well,
21:21
Speaker 3: one thing I one thing I've thought about in the
21:23
Speaker 3: last few years, which might be the most obvious thing
21:27
Speaker 3: in the world, but I just learned it, or I
21:30
Speaker 3: don't know if it's something I can say I learned,
21:32
Speaker 3: but it's it's it's a theory I have, and it
21:35
Speaker 3: is that if something cannot be the loudest thing in the.
21:39
Speaker 4: Mix, it shouldn't be in there.
21:42
Speaker 3: Wow, like like because so many times through the years
21:46
Speaker 3: have been like, oh this part.
21:48
Speaker 4: Is cool, but oh it's not. It's too loud, you know,
21:52
Speaker 4: like pull.
21:53
Speaker 3: It down and you know, and you're burying things. And
21:55
Speaker 3: I just thought, no, if if it can't be the
22:00
Speaker 3: loudest thing, it shouldn't be there, you know, if if
22:03
Speaker 3: something if yeah, if something's going to bother you, if
22:06
Speaker 3: it's too loud, and it's to me it seems seemingly
22:09
Speaker 3: obvious now like, yeah, it probably shouldn't be in the mix,
22:13
Speaker 3: And that's helpful. To me, because when you listen to
22:17
Speaker 3: an album on different stereos, it always sounds different, or
22:20
Speaker 3: if you listen to like the album playing in the
22:23
Speaker 3: next room, it sounds different. So on this record, I
22:26
Speaker 3: feel like I've eliminated that because now I listen to
22:28
Speaker 3: it and I go, well, that sounds louder and that
22:30
Speaker 3: sounds quieter.
22:31
Speaker 4: But who cares.
22:32
Speaker 1: Do you ever ever have experienced someone's playing a song
22:34
Speaker 1: in another room and you can't tell what the song is,
22:38
Speaker 1: but it so it sounds really cool, and then when
22:40
Speaker 1: you hear it, it's almost a little bit of a disappointment.
22:42
Speaker 4: That wasn't that? How you know invented ambient music? Oh?
22:46
Speaker 1: I don't know.
22:47
Speaker 4: Yeah, apparently he was.
22:48
Speaker 3: In like a hospital or something and he just heard
22:50
Speaker 3: some like music playing like fear in the distance, and
22:53
Speaker 3: he couldn't.
22:53
Speaker 4: Tell what it was, and he just thought that was
22:56
Speaker 4: a cool effect, Right, that's how you invent a genre.
23:00
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
23:01
Speaker 3: Just a bunch of music you can barely hear, and
23:04
Speaker 3: it's like, what if all the music was meant to
23:06
Speaker 3: be barely heard?
23:08
Speaker 1: You may shod spooky action. Tell me about that. It's
23:10
Speaker 1: got a very vivid.
23:14
Speaker 4: Narrative. Well, that's good. That's the one song. My wife
23:17
Speaker 4: said she couldn't figure out what was going on.
23:20
Speaker 3: Well, I was reading about, you know, I was reading
23:26
Speaker 3: about a couple of things. I was reading about quantum entanglement,
23:30
Speaker 3: and Einstein said that quantum entanglement was spooky action at
23:36
Speaker 3: a distance, which I thought was an interesting turn of phrase.
23:40
Speaker 3: And then unrelated to that, I was reading an article
23:44
Speaker 3: about the Cassini Huygens probe, which you know, was circling
23:49
Speaker 3: Saturn for thirteen years and taking pictures of it and
23:52
Speaker 3: that's how we know so much about everything that's going
23:55
Speaker 3: on around there. And then at the end of it,
23:58
Speaker 3: it you know, immolated itself and they flew it into
24:01
Speaker 3: Saturn and it burned.
24:03
Speaker 4: And the idea was that it would.
24:05
Speaker 3: Be a song about like the last moments of the
24:07
Speaker 3: Cassini Huygens pro where for some reason it's sentient I
24:11
Speaker 3: guess just artistic license, but the idea of like, what's
24:16
Speaker 3: what's it thinking right before it dies?
24:19
Speaker 4: And I thought the last.
24:21
Speaker 3: Thing it would think would be like, wow, this is beautiful,
24:26
Speaker 3: you know, just looking looking at everything around it. That's
24:29
Speaker 3: basically the little snapshot I wanted it to be.
24:35
Speaker 1: Why is that such a sad thing? The idea of
24:38
Speaker 1: this space pro it's done all its work and then
24:41
Speaker 1: just like it heads into the planet to burn up.
24:43
Speaker 1: I find it's just an incredibly sad image.
24:46
Speaker 4: Really, I mean, I guess it kind of is.
24:48
Speaker 3: But I also, I mean there's not much of it.
24:54
Speaker 3: There's not much of it in the song, only one line.
24:58
Speaker 3: But the subtext in my brain was that quantum entanglement,
25:04
Speaker 3: the idea that you're connected with something and you're never
25:10
Speaker 3: you're always connected with it. There could be billions of
25:12
Speaker 3: miles between you, but you're still connected to it is
25:15
Speaker 3: a kind of like a beautiful idea. And it made
25:17
Speaker 3: me think of like the idea of heaven, of a
25:20
Speaker 3: people we've lost, how we're always connected.
25:24
Speaker 4: And so there's a line in the song where it was.
25:29
Speaker 3: Like like a, I guess it's the part in the
25:34
Speaker 3: song where it flies into Saturn and it was like
25:37
Speaker 3: a series of nail biting dives and I'm done.
25:39
Speaker 4: I'm on the cloud. And the with the double meaning.
25:46
Speaker 3: Being that all the information inside Castini Huygens is on
25:50
Speaker 3: the cloud, like like the machine is gone, that everything
25:54
Speaker 3: it learned is, you know, on the literal cloud. And
25:58
Speaker 3: then but then the idea of like the cloud like heaven, right,
26:03
Speaker 3: So so there's kind of a I think it's kind
26:07
Speaker 3: of a spiritual song. And I think the the line
26:11
Speaker 3: about like have you seen it the way it's meant
26:13
Speaker 3: to be seen?
26:14
Speaker 4: Is supposed to be a very hopeful line.
26:18
Speaker 3: I think it's just a very another way of saying
26:21
Speaker 3: stop and smell the roses. That the casini heiens haygens
26:26
Speaker 3: probe isn't sad to die, you know, it's just look
26:31
Speaker 3: at how beautiful this is. Like I'm going to go now,
26:34
Speaker 3: which seems like a you know, that's how I'd like
26:38
Speaker 3: to depart this earth. I think, what a beautiful place.
26:41
Speaker 4: See you later.
26:43
Speaker 1: Okay. In both the cases of the songs we've talked about,
26:47
Speaker 1: you've come up with an initial idea from the sign
26:51
Speaker 1: from this from reading Einstein, where a lot of people
26:54
Speaker 1: get their lyrics by the way, from Einstein.
26:57
Speaker 4: Well, I wasn't reading Einstein.
26:58
Speaker 3: It was like it was like an article somewhere, you know,
27:01
Speaker 3: I'm sure I clicked on it.
27:02
Speaker 4: It was it.
27:03
Speaker 3: Was probably like a smart person clickbait. Okay, spooky action,
27:07
Speaker 3: what's this.
27:10
Speaker 1: Prostrate?
27:11
Speaker 4: Try?
27:11
Speaker 3: Oh no, no, I have my email address, curse them, Yeah,
27:15
Speaker 3: get all these democrats asking me for money.
27:18
Speaker 1: But then, but then you do a lot of research
27:21
Speaker 1: because you mentioned all the stars, you mentioned the things
27:23
Speaker 1: that it would have seen, and in the other case,
27:26
Speaker 1: you you looked at what those communities would have been
27:29
Speaker 1: like and you.
27:30
Speaker 4: Describe Yeah, which which was new to me.
27:33
Speaker 1: Is that new to you?
27:34
Speaker 3: I've never done I've never done research like int into songs,
27:41
Speaker 3: like yeah, I would just try and find like, you know,
27:45
Speaker 3: because I have a vague idea of like this.
27:48
Speaker 4: You know, the weird story I'm trying to tell.
27:50
Speaker 3: But then I'm like, I need some details to make this,
27:55
Speaker 3: you know, just to surround it with. And then unspooky action.
27:59
Speaker 3: I looked up like oh, and some of it was
28:02
Speaker 3: just you just try and find things that sounded cool,
28:05
Speaker 3: like the Arc of Daphness.
28:07
Speaker 4: That's cool, keelers Edge, that's cool. The Loan Propeller. It's like,
28:11
Speaker 4: what's the loan Propeller.
28:13
Speaker 3: Oh, it's it was made by Moonlits And it's like, oh,
28:16
Speaker 3: that's cool.
28:18
Speaker 1: That should be its own song, The Loan Propeller. That's
28:21
Speaker 1: a great title.
28:22
Speaker 4: Yeah, well I guess it can be. I'm allowed to
28:27
Speaker 4: do that. But I doubt I will.
28:28
Speaker 3: I think I've exhausted everything I have to say on
28:31
Speaker 3: the matter with with the eighty words I wrote.
28:34
Speaker 1: You know, so tell me about a ballot of the
28:40
Speaker 1: last pay phone.
28:42
Speaker 4: Yeah?
28:42
Speaker 3: That was?
28:43
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was That was. That was another one I was.
28:45
Speaker 3: I was reading about the last payphone in New York City,
28:49
Speaker 3: and I thought.
28:54
Speaker 1: Did you go see it? You see it at the
28:55
Speaker 1: Museum of New York.
28:56
Speaker 4: Yes, exactly.
28:58
Speaker 1: I hope they cleaned it up, because ye remember, I'm
29:03
Speaker 1: sure they did.
29:07
Speaker 4: But again, I was talking about this. Last night. There
29:13
Speaker 4: was this.
29:14
Speaker 3: Even though I'm I'm not a big Raven Raymond Carver expert,
29:20
Speaker 3: I read this little five page short story called Fat.
29:23
Speaker 3: It was about this this waitress in bed at night
29:26
Speaker 3: with her boyfriend and she's talking about this overweight man
29:28
Speaker 3: she served and she can't she know, she can't put
29:33
Speaker 3: it into words, what you know, what fascinated her about him?
29:38
Speaker 3: And she doesn't even know why she's talking about him.
29:40
Speaker 3: And I think her boyfriend is like, what are you
29:41
Speaker 3: talking about? And but you're reading it, and you know, like, oh,
29:46
Speaker 3: she relates to this man somehow. There's something, there's something
29:50
Speaker 3: in him that she sees in herself. But she she
29:53
Speaker 3: can't figure it out. So I was thinking of that,
29:56
Speaker 3: and and instead of that, it was this guy who
30:00
Speaker 3: goes to see the last payphone in the museum of
30:03
Speaker 3: the City of New York. And he's looking at it,
30:05
Speaker 3: and you can't quite figure out why he's so fascinated
30:09
Speaker 3: the last payphone. But but to me, it seems very obvious,
30:13
Speaker 3: because you know, the last payphone got left behind. You know,
30:18
Speaker 3: it used to be important, it used to be a
30:20
Speaker 3: big part of the world, and then now it's in
30:23
Speaker 3: a museum. Now it's just like a relic. And I thought,
30:27
Speaker 3: to me, it seems pretty easy. Why a person might
30:31
Speaker 3: a person.
30:31
Speaker 1: Might be not so different from the satellite story.
30:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean they're they're they're all meant to
30:37
Speaker 3: be like very very similar. I mean like I was
30:41
Speaker 3: like to me, like I wanted them all to be
30:44
Speaker 3: kind of stories about loss and acceptance, Like like when
30:49
Speaker 3: you start with loss, yeah, it makes it seem like
30:51
Speaker 3: they're very sad.
30:53
Speaker 1: But was that something that emerged from the stories or
30:57
Speaker 1: something when you sat down you wrote loss at the
31:00
Speaker 1: top of the paper and said, no, no ideas.
31:03
Speaker 4: I think it just im I think it just immerged.
31:06
Speaker 1: Why do you think it emerged now.
31:09
Speaker 4: I don't know.
31:11
Speaker 3: I mean, maybe it's just maybe it's just like getting
31:14
Speaker 3: getting older, just just just trying, just trying to figure
31:17
Speaker 3: out life. It's just but it really was just it
31:23
Speaker 3: wasn't really conscious. I mean, what I was consciously trying
31:28
Speaker 3: to write only came together as it as it took
31:32
Speaker 3: form on its own, and I began I began to
31:35
Speaker 3: see that there was there was a connection between the
31:38
Speaker 3: things I was writing, like I had to go back myself.
31:44
Speaker 3: But I mean, I think that's also I mean that's
31:46
Speaker 3: what I struggle with.
31:48
Speaker 4: I mean, having struggled with like mental health.
31:51
Speaker 3: I I think that those are those are strong feelings
31:55
Speaker 3: like trying to you know, trying to come out the
32:00
Speaker 3: other side, trying trying to be happy, you know, trying
32:05
Speaker 3: to figure out what can I do to be happy?
32:07
Speaker 3: And one of the things you have to do to
32:09
Speaker 3: be happy. I think it was just like ride with
32:11
Speaker 3: all the loss and tragedy in your life, you know, yeah,
32:19
Speaker 3: just like a The one song, the song on the
32:26
Speaker 3: record that is the most absolutely auto biographical, it's called
32:28
Speaker 3: like Bonus My Ties, about my friend Cheryl who died
32:32
Speaker 3: of cancer, and it was about the first time I
32:35
Speaker 3: saw her, and.
32:37
Speaker 4: I was so shocked that.
32:41
Speaker 3: She had already seemingly accepted like she had spent she
32:46
Speaker 3: had spent months dealing with the fact that she was
32:49
Speaker 3: going to die soon. And I was talking to her
32:51
Speaker 3: and she was very and she was very, very like
32:55
Speaker 3: matter of fact about it, like how like, oh, I'm
32:57
Speaker 3: worried about I'm worried about Warren. She was worried about
33:00
Speaker 3: her husband, who's like an old old friend of mine,
33:04
Speaker 3: and like, what's what's you know, how's he going to
33:07
Speaker 3: deal with me dying? And she they always made drinks.
33:12
Speaker 3: They were the couple that would always have like different
33:14
Speaker 3: drinks when you came over.
33:15
Speaker 4: And that night they made my ties.
33:17
Speaker 3: And I just thought, like, you're going through this hell
33:19
Speaker 3: in your life, but you're still making my ties for
33:22
Speaker 3: your friends and they're coming over and you know, and
33:27
Speaker 3: I think we both got in my tie and she said,
33:31
Speaker 3: you know, like I should have I should have died
33:34
Speaker 3: four months ago. Everybody thought I was going to die
33:35
Speaker 3: four months ago because it was so bad, and you know,
33:39
Speaker 3: this is my bonus time on earth, and so like
33:42
Speaker 3: this is a bonus my tie and everything like cheers,
33:46
Speaker 3: you know, drinking on my ties. And but I just thought,
33:50
Speaker 3: how like what it's it's sad.
33:54
Speaker 4: But there was a kind of there's a kind of
33:58
Speaker 4: beauty to.
34:01
Speaker 3: How people face the inevitable. You know, it's like everybody's
34:06
Speaker 3: everybody's going to die and you can put your head
34:08
Speaker 3: in the sand and say no, not me. I'm you know,
34:12
Speaker 3: I'm going to be like some comedians said, I'm going
34:14
Speaker 3: to be immortal, and so far, so good.
34:17
Speaker 4: You know.
34:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I think I think that's a I think
34:23
Speaker 3: that's in a I think there is something just yeah,
34:28
Speaker 3: beautiful about figuring out how to, like you know, how
34:32
Speaker 3: to how to end, how to how to how to
34:35
Speaker 3: deal with things ending.
34:37
Speaker 2: Well, let's break and we'll be back with the New Pornographers.
34:44
Speaker 1: You know, the the songs, particularly Spooky Action, the Payphone song.
34:50
Speaker 1: They remind me you always have a lot of technology
34:52
Speaker 1: in your songs, do I. Well, you have like twin cinemas,
34:56
Speaker 1: which is when I was a kid, I remember the
34:58
Speaker 1: first time there's a twin cinema and nobody could you
35:01
Speaker 1: can go and choose what movie you could see? That
35:03
Speaker 1: seemed incredible. Of course they was showing the same one
35:06
Speaker 1: on both screens when you get there exactly. But break lights,
35:11
Speaker 1: things like that, and there's sort of the kind of
35:14
Speaker 1: old fashioned technology that's sort of sort of like about
35:17
Speaker 1: it in your songs.
35:19
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I think I can see that, yeah, and.
35:24
Speaker 1: It makes me think, you know, it almost reminds me
35:26
Speaker 1: of the Kinks. You know how the Kinks were like
35:29
Speaker 1: a modern band, but they always seem to be singing
35:31
Speaker 1: about things that were like thirty or forty years old. Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
35:34
Speaker 1: To me, I always get that sense with new pornographers
35:37
Speaker 1: that like it's a very up to bate band, but
35:42
Speaker 1: the sense of loss over these kind of old technologies
35:45
Speaker 1: fading away. I always got that from your music.
35:48
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I can see that.
35:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like, even though it's incredibly u tooth and obscure.
35:54
Speaker 3: I think the song electric Version is kind of about that,
35:58
Speaker 3: although I couldn't even tell you what the lyrics are
36:00
Speaker 3: right now.
36:02
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I don't know. I don't know why
36:06
Speaker 4: that is. I mean, I do think I come.
36:10
Speaker 3: I come from a kind of like culturally, I feel
36:13
Speaker 3: like I being a kid in the seventies. I remember
36:19
Speaker 3: watching the reruns were from the fifties, so I had
36:24
Speaker 3: like one culturally, I had like one foot in this
36:27
Speaker 3: weird black and white past where I was watching I
36:29
Speaker 3: Love Lucy and The Andy Griffiths Show and and things
36:33
Speaker 3: like that. And also my parents were like I was.
36:38
Speaker 3: I was the youngest of five kids, so it was
36:42
Speaker 3: like the uh my parents were like, we're from a
36:47
Speaker 3: generation like basically before rock and roll, you know, like
36:51
Speaker 3: like I think my mom was a young mother. You know,
36:54
Speaker 3: I think she had a baby when Elvis showed up.
36:57
Speaker 3: You know, she might have had a newborn. So like
37:00
Speaker 3: they were so there was this whole like you know
37:04
Speaker 3: that there was like my life but like my parents,
37:06
Speaker 3: like to me, seemed to come from a distant pat.
37:09
Speaker 1: Okay, what what record albums did you have at home
37:11
Speaker 1: growing up?
37:13
Speaker 3: Uh?
37:13
Speaker 4: You mean like that I bought or No.
37:16
Speaker 1: I'm always I'm always fascinated that people because.
37:19
Speaker 4: Well they like they like country music.
37:22
Speaker 1: Oh really okay, most people I know, like they would
37:24
Speaker 1: they'd have like the Sound of Music soundtrack.
37:27
Speaker 4: No, they were not at all.
37:28
Speaker 1: Now they were.
37:29
Speaker 4: It was it was country music.
37:30
Speaker 3: I remember my mom liked Charlie Pride and I still
37:33
Speaker 3: love those Charlie Pride records. She like really liked Freddie Fender,
37:39
Speaker 3: you know, she liked she just liked country music. I
37:41
Speaker 3: remember we had a k Tel country music record that
37:43
Speaker 3: I absolutely loved, you know, I had like.
37:48
Speaker 4: You know, I beg your pardon. I never promised you
37:51
Speaker 4: a Rose Guardian like.
37:52
Speaker 3: I still love that that met That country politan is
37:56
Speaker 3: still my favorite country music.
37:59
Speaker 4: Like Charlie Rich. What was the big Charlie Rich hit?
38:02
Speaker 4: Hey did you happen? Let's see the most beautiful.
38:06
Speaker 1: Grool h I love that Behind Closed Doors? Wasn't that
38:11
Speaker 1: one of his? Yeah?
38:11
Speaker 4: Yeah?
38:12
Speaker 3: We had a best of Whale and Jennings record I remember,
38:16
Speaker 3: which I didn't know was outlaw country. It just seemed
38:18
Speaker 3: like more country to me. But I had older brothers
38:23
Speaker 3: and sisters, so I think that's how I hold that's
38:25
Speaker 3: how I heard other music. Like when I was like
38:28
Speaker 3: nine or ten, I had an older brother who bought
38:31
Speaker 3: never Mind the Bollocks and Talking Head seventy seven, So
38:35
Speaker 3: there was music I remember, and because of them. I
38:37
Speaker 3: remember the White album was around or like the like
38:41
Speaker 3: Wings greatest hits, Like there wasn't a ton, It wasn't
38:45
Speaker 3: a ton of music. My sister who was closest to me,
38:48
Speaker 3: really like Pat Benatar, and she liked you know, Ario Speedwagon,
38:53
Speaker 3: hind Fidelity and I thought that was cool too.
38:56
Speaker 1: But you didn't start playing till much later, right, I
38:58
Speaker 1: didn't start.
38:58
Speaker 4: I didn't pick up a guitar until I was eighteen.
39:00
Speaker 3: But around the age of sixteen, that's when I think
39:05
Speaker 3: I decided that music was a big part of my personality.
39:09
Speaker 3: And I became obsessed with ra em like murmur and
39:13
Speaker 3: reckoning and chronic Town and I loved the Smiths, and
39:16
Speaker 3: I loved echoing the Bunnyman, and I loved violent Fems
39:19
Speaker 3: and Husker doing the replacements and whoever.
39:23
Speaker 1: You know.
39:24
Speaker 4: One of the advantage, I felt like a nerd, but
39:26
Speaker 4: I was super cool when I look back at what
39:28
Speaker 4: I was listening to.
39:28
Speaker 1: I just had one of the advantages growing up in Canadas.
39:31
Speaker 1: You just got a lot more English bands, and you
39:33
Speaker 1: got them much earlier than Americans did.
39:36
Speaker 4: I think.
39:36
Speaker 3: I think it's possible being being part of the Commonwealth, maybe, like, yeah,
39:42
Speaker 3: I bought enemy, you know, religiously, was always interested about
39:46
Speaker 3: what was going on there. I mean, the Queen was
39:49
Speaker 3: on our money. I didn't understand disliking the Queen, but
39:54
Speaker 3: at least I knew, like who were they were talking
39:56
Speaker 3: about when they said when the sex pistols talk about
39:59
Speaker 3: God Save the Queen. It's like I've seen her, Yeah,
40:03
Speaker 3: God Save Her.
40:04
Speaker 1: Was there one song? Was there one album that made
40:06
Speaker 1: you think that made you pick up the guitar and
40:08
Speaker 1: think I can do this.
40:11
Speaker 4: No, I just said I loved music.
40:15
Speaker 3: And I had a friend who just when I was eighteen,
40:19
Speaker 3: said hey, I'll show you how to play a few chords.
40:22
Speaker 3: Showed me how to play E, A and D and
40:24
Speaker 3: he said, okay, now you can play Gloria by them,
40:27
Speaker 3: and I thought that's cool. And then I realized that E,
40:30
Speaker 3: A and D. I could also play Superman. The song
40:34
Speaker 3: ari Em covered.
40:36
Speaker 1: It was a sixty song right yeah, by the Click.
40:39
Speaker 4: And which I learned years later. And then I think.
40:44
Speaker 3: I I bought a Easy Guitar Beatles songbook, and I
40:50
Speaker 3: think that's where I learned most of my chords. But
40:54
Speaker 3: even Easy Guitar Beatles was still like every chord you know,
40:59
Speaker 3: you were learning C seven and C minor, you know
41:02
Speaker 3: C sharp minor.
41:04
Speaker 1: And so when did the writing start, I think.
41:12
Speaker 4: I don't know it was. I'm not even sure if
41:14
Speaker 4: you'd call it writing.
41:15
Speaker 3: I think I would just I would just like mess
41:17
Speaker 3: around on the guitar, like I remember getting super into Uh.
41:24
Speaker 3: There was a point where all I I'm not sure
41:26
Speaker 3: if I started playing with anybody yet, but I became
41:29
Speaker 3: obsessed with the Pixies and Throwing Muses. There was a
41:32
Speaker 3: six month period where I honestly don't think I listened
41:35
Speaker 3: to anything except Pixies and Throwing music. And there's some
41:40
Speaker 3: especially with Throwing Muses, there was something cool and angular there.
41:43
Speaker 3: I realized I could just pick up a guitar.
41:46
Speaker 4: And I didn't even have to learn scales.
41:49
Speaker 3: You know, I could just like make rhythmic noise, like
41:52
Speaker 3: I could almost play like random notes, but if you
41:55
Speaker 3: do them, if I play these five random notes, but
41:58
Speaker 3: I keep doing it every few bars, like that's.
42:00
Speaker 4: That's the part, you know. It felt like that's what
42:02
Speaker 4: the Throwing Muses do. And then the Pixies.
42:06
Speaker 3: I realized like it was the first music so that
42:09
Speaker 3: I absolutely loved where I could break it apart and
42:12
Speaker 3: figure out what the parts were.
42:14
Speaker 4: It's like, okay, well the.
42:16
Speaker 3: Bass is doing that simple thing, and the guitar is
42:19
Speaker 3: just doing that simple thing, and the drums are doing
42:21
Speaker 3: that and the guitar is just going you know, it's
42:24
Speaker 3: just making cool simple melodies. And that was what I
42:31
Speaker 3: think made me think I wanted to try making music,
42:36
Speaker 3: but I was not serious about it that it even
42:39
Speaker 3: occurred to me to imitate the Pixies or imitate throwing muses.
42:43
Speaker 3: And I start my friend started a band. It was
42:48
Speaker 3: called Superconductor because we thought it was a stupid name,
42:52
Speaker 3: which was a very ninetiest thing to do.
42:54
Speaker 4: This is the worst name. Let's start a band to
42:56
Speaker 4: go with this terrible name.
42:58
Speaker 3: And we ended up having six guitar players because six
43:01
Speaker 3: guys who played guitar showed up. And then we just
43:07
Speaker 3: and then nobody wanted to sing, and I realized, like, oh,
43:10
Speaker 3: maybe I'm the singer. H And I never thought about
43:14
Speaker 3: being a singer in the band, but it was almost like.
43:18
Speaker 4: I don't.
43:19
Speaker 3: I don't know why, you know, I I've been thinking
43:21
Speaker 3: about it recently, how like about things being almost predestined,
43:28
Speaker 3: like like how like how much of your life is
43:30
Speaker 3: pre Will?
43:31
Speaker 4: Sorry pre will?
43:32
Speaker 5: Like that works too, pre Will pre Well, yeah, I
43:40
Speaker 5: like to live pre Will. Uh it's my favorite era.
43:46
Speaker 1: I was into pre love.
43:49
Speaker 4: Exactly. Uh.
43:50
Speaker 3: But the uh, because I've just becoming the singer in
43:55
Speaker 3: the band, I just fell into it and it just
43:58
Speaker 3: it just happened and I never I never intended and.
44:01
Speaker 4: I I look, I look.
44:04
Speaker 3: At myself playing music through the years, and I can't
44:07
Speaker 3: figure out why I kept going because for the first
44:11
Speaker 3: few years I wasn't very good. I was I wasn't
44:15
Speaker 3: really taking it seriously, but I kept doing it.
44:19
Speaker 1: Like I was in your twenties, Yeah, like early twenties.
44:23
Speaker 1: What were you were you at school at that point?
44:25
Speaker 1: Were you doing other things that you were more serious
44:27
Speaker 1: about that.
44:27
Speaker 3: I was a school but I was a terrible student.
44:30
Speaker 3: You know, it's just a general loser.
44:33
Speaker 1: Wow, you know, but I really selling this album, I
44:37
Speaker 1: have to say.
44:38
Speaker 3: But I think, but I know, I think I was
44:40
Speaker 3: a loser because I was kind of not listening to
44:45
Speaker 3: what my fate was, you know.
44:48
Speaker 4: I think.
44:50
Speaker 3: I was clearly being called towards something, and which is
44:55
Speaker 3: kind of my point, and that like I would do
44:58
Speaker 3: these shows where there's nobody there and we weren't very good,
45:02
Speaker 3: but yet none of that it bummed me out, but
45:06
Speaker 3: not enough that I would stop. And there are so
45:08
Speaker 3: many things, things that I've been bad at in my
45:10
Speaker 3: life that made me think I don't ever want to
45:12
Speaker 3: do that again because I hate being.
45:14
Speaker 4: Bad at it. But music, I just kept I kept
45:17
Speaker 4: moving in that direction.
45:18
Speaker 1: Now, was Vancouver a good place to be for that?
45:20
Speaker 1: Were there was there a scene where they're good clubs?
45:24
Speaker 1: Were there places you could go? Did people want to
45:26
Speaker 1: hear new music?
45:28
Speaker 3: I think so well, I think there's just you know,
45:31
Speaker 3: you have group you have groups of people that like music.
45:34
Speaker 4: I think I think that's where it starts.
45:36
Speaker 3: You you collect in this city and you realize they
45:40
Speaker 3: are the people that go to the same shows, or
45:42
Speaker 3: maybe they all work at the same record store or
45:45
Speaker 3: something like that, and at some point somebody says, oh,
45:48
Speaker 3: maybe we should start a band because we we like
45:52
Speaker 3: The Fall and mud Honey and Sonic Youth or whatever,
45:55
Speaker 3: you know. And yeah, So, I mean I think every
46:01
Speaker 3: city has that. And you have you know, you have
46:04
Speaker 3: the kind of group of people and I don't know
46:06
Speaker 3: if they have the girls that you're in love with
46:09
Speaker 3: than that group of people.
46:10
Speaker 4: And you know, and.
46:11
Speaker 3: There are people that have their weird little clubs that
46:13
Speaker 3: people have their weird little record stores and clubs that
46:16
Speaker 3: let you play. So it was good that way, but nothing,
46:22
Speaker 3: nothing really important was coming out of it. But you know,
46:28
Speaker 3: it's I don't think that's that is important. It was
46:30
Speaker 3: just a place for people to start. It was people
46:33
Speaker 3: a place for people like me just to kind of
46:37
Speaker 3: start playing people like me and pornographers and Destroyer and
46:41
Speaker 3: Black Mountain, a place just for those people to start
46:44
Speaker 3: playing music and see what happens, and some people drop out.
46:48
Speaker 3: I used to think it was so strange that people
46:50
Speaker 3: quit quit playing music, Like somebody I knew from the
46:55
Speaker 3: scene who had a band that was going for years,
46:57
Speaker 3: and one day they said, no, I'm going back to
46:58
Speaker 3: school and they abandoned music forever.
47:01
Speaker 4: And I thought, what you know?
47:04
Speaker 3: And that's when I realized, Oh, people are doing this
47:07
Speaker 3: for different reasons, like like like some people are starting
47:11
Speaker 3: a band because they wanted to become popular, and if
47:12
Speaker 3: they don't become popular, it's like, what's the point.
47:15
Speaker 4: And I realized, No, I was not that person. I
47:18
Speaker 4: was a person.
47:19
Speaker 1: What person were you then? What allowed you to persevere? I?
47:23
Speaker 3: Well, again, I think it was I had no choice.
47:27
Speaker 3: It was just a direction I was moving in. It
47:30
Speaker 3: never occurred to me to stop, and I loved it.
47:35
Speaker 3: I loved the idea of it as a life pursuit.
47:39
Speaker 3: I remember seeing the band The Sun City Girls play
47:42
Speaker 3: in a radio station, and I was very inspired by
47:46
Speaker 3: watching them, not only because they were good, but there
47:48
Speaker 3: was a sense of music as a life pursuit, like
47:53
Speaker 3: that they didn't care if they were popular. They I
47:57
Speaker 3: could just sense this love of music. And I remember
47:59
Speaker 3: seeing this songwriter from San Francisco named Barbara Manning, and
48:03
Speaker 3: she gave me the same feeling, like she is doing
48:07
Speaker 3: this for the love of it. And that was inspiring
48:11
Speaker 3: to me.
48:12
Speaker 4: And so I think I was. I thought, that's me, and.
48:17
Speaker 3: Like maybe I saw and I must have saw myself.
48:20
Speaker 3: I think I saw myself in the Sunset Girls in
48:23
Speaker 3: the and Barbara Manning, the same way that guy and
48:26
Speaker 3: Ball of the Last Payphone saw himself in the Last
48:29
Speaker 3: Payphone in the Museum of the City of New York.
48:32
Speaker 4: That's a big sentence.
48:36
Speaker 1: That is a big sentence. Yes, do you guys want
48:39
Speaker 1: to play.
48:40
Speaker 4: A little Yeah, let's let's try.
48:45
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Catherine, I didn't get over to you. I
48:46
Speaker 1: wanted to ask you about No, no, no, no, please, there's
48:49
Speaker 1: still time.
48:50
Speaker 6: It's all good.
48:52
Speaker 4: We can and if we screw up, we can.
48:55
Speaker 1: I sing what rehearsals must be like, like what why.
49:04
Speaker 4: Why don't we do? Why don't we do? Pay?
49:06
Speaker 3: Because we h we've been talking about it. We've got
49:10
Speaker 3: something like a segue, right.
49:16
Speaker 4: I say. One Tuesday before.
49:38
Speaker 7: I had to see it with my very eyes at
49:43
Speaker 7: the Museum of the City of New York had the
49:48
Speaker 7: off hand brace that you will find in the last
49:54
Speaker 7: ones left alive.
49:58
Speaker 4: They took it from Time Square.
50:01
Speaker 8: May little fanfare or paid respect. It first comes love,
50:10
Speaker 8: then it must be Then it's terminal Veloss City, nothing
50:18
Speaker 8: major mind.
50:22
Speaker 4: It's just the last pay.
50:28
Speaker 8: Nothing major man.
50:33
Speaker 7: It's just the last pay.
50:48
Speaker 4: I had to see it with my very eyes, but
50:53
Speaker 4: some advice from the just left behind.
50:58
Speaker 8: Reversed the charges.
51:00
Speaker 4: I tried, but it had no lightening inside.
51:08
Speaker 7: Did you get a good look at their face? Because
51:13
Speaker 7: often thieves.
51:14
Speaker 4: Are not gone very far, and they're not strangers.
51:20
Speaker 1: They really are.
51:23
Speaker 8: They're not strangers, they really are. Nothing made man.
51:33
Speaker 7: It's just the last pay pham, nothing maging man.
51:42
Speaker 8: It's just the last pay phone. Nothing made a man.
51:50
Speaker 4: It's just the last.
51:51
Speaker 7: Pay phone, nothing made a man. It's just the last
52:01
Speaker 7: pay fam.
52:10
Speaker 8: Yeah, first comes love, then comes pity. Then it's terminal
52:17
Speaker 8: blass City. Yeah, first comes love, then comes pity. Then
52:35
Speaker 8: it's terminal Looss City.
52:48
Speaker 3: I like the sound of like the gears moving around
52:50
Speaker 3: inside that thing.
52:53
Speaker 4: It sounds like a machine.
52:55
Speaker 1: New Pornographers, thank you so much, Carl, Catherine, thank you
52:58
Speaker 1: for coming in. It's been just wonderful. Thank you.
53:02
Speaker 2: In an episode description, you'll find a link to a
53:04
Speaker 2: playlist of our favorite songs from the New Pornographers. If
53:07
Speaker 2: you shure to check out YouTube dot com slash Broken
53:09
Speaker 2: Record Podcast to see all our video interviews, and be
53:12
Speaker 2: sure to follow us on Instagram at the Broken Record Pod.
53:15
Speaker 2: Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with
53:18
Speaker 2: marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer
53:21
Speaker 2: is Ben Holliday. Broken Record is production of Pushkin Industries.
53:25
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53:40
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53:42
Speaker 2: Our theme music is by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.