
If you've somehow failed to succumb to the charms of Canadian pop collective the New Pornographers thus far, this is the perfect time to do so. Their Together album from earlier this year is possibly their strongest yet, and the band are headed our way with as many NPs as possible. After missing the last tour because her solo album was running late, vocalist Neko Case has confirmed that she's on board for this tour. Well, probably.
"She says she's
coming. That's as much as I can tell you," chuckles Carl "AC" Newman, the
band's main singer/songwriter and default leader. "There are places in the
world she doesn't like going but she really likes going to Australia."
However, any hopes that the mysterious Dan Bejar might make
the trip have been once again thwarted. "I don't think that will ever happen," Newman.
"Dan's just weird that way. I don't think that he will ever go to Australia; not
with [his main band] Destroyer, not with New Pornographers, not with anybody. I was with Dan in North Carolina recently and he
was talking to [Destroyer's label] Merge, basically telling them that he didn't
want to tour his next record and to figure out some really creative marketing
ideas that would overcome the fact that he's not touring." He laughs softly.
"That's Bejar for you."
However, the most notable thing about Together is probably the contributions of the relative newcomer Kathryn Calder: originally recruited a couple of years back as the Female Voice for When Neko
Couldn't Tour, the album proves she's now an integral part of the band.
"Yeah, she really had a big hand in this record. With this
band this thing has always been that we just go into the studio and screw
around: we don't know what we're doing," Newman enthuses. "Even this many years
on we still have that we're ultimately a bunch of friends hanging out and
playing music. With one of Dan's songs ‘Silver Jenny Dollar', on the day we
were mixing it, Kathryn just started doing these big, ridiculous harmonies. So she and I
overdubbed about ten tracks of them and Dan was cheering us on: ‘Yes! More
Queen vocals!'"
That playfulness has clearly connected with certain
Australian fans. "Murray from the Wiggles came to our show last time we were
down. He was very cool."
Really?
"Yeah: I was talking about all the old Australian music that
I loved and he was shocked that I knew it and I was shocked that he knew it. It was like: ‘but... but you're in the Wiggles'. I was shocked that he was in the Wiggles and he
was shocked that I was from Canada. We seemed equally uncool there." Andrew P Street
University of Sydney 2006
Telephone 1300 762 545
Date Wed 10 Nov 2010
Open 8pm
629m - Can we just take a little second to throw our hands up in the air for the...
780m - The old Duck and Swan in Chippo has had a facelift and is now the Duck Inn...
275m - The University of Sydney is the oldest university in Australia. In addition...
631m - A hurricane would do a better job of ordering their tens of thousands of...
652m - Glebe Community Gardens consist of 25 garden plots, common garden beds and a...
© 2007 - 2012 Time Out Group Ltd. All rights reserved. All material on this site is © Time Out.