ian o’phelan

Download: A.C. Newman “Like A Hitman, Like A Dancer”

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(from Get Guilty on Matador)

A.C. Newman sprouted out of the New Pornographers with an official solo album in 2004 that reinforced yet again the concentration of talent romping around Canada. His new Get Guilty is out now and he speaks early in the morning from New York. This interview by Thomas McMahon.

Being based in the U.S. now, what do you miss most about Canada?
I miss the Asian food in Vancouver. A couple of my favorite Japanese and Chinese restaurants are there. You know, I miss my friends and family there. It’s good to go back. It makes me appreciate it. When you’ve lived your whole life in a place, you get kind of sick of it. You start thinking, ‘Nothing happens in this backward city.’ It’s good to go back. Last time the New Pornographers went back there, we did this little two-day benefit concert that was for ALS—Lou Gehrig’s disease. We got a bunch of our friends to play it. The New Pornographers played it and Neko [Case, also of the New Pornographers], Destroyer, Black Mountain, Andrew Bird, Deerhoof, and Stevie Jackson [Belle and Sebastian]. It was the ideal kind of homecoming, where you come home and you’re doing something for a good cause. It was outside—a nice day in the park. My last memories of Vancouver and Canada are very nice.
You recorded all of Get Guilty in the U.S., right? Do you think that location has a significant impact on the music?
That’s a tough one. I don’t really think it does. My writing is so solitary. You can do it anywhere. And most of the work is just done by myself, so I’m not really taking in my surroundings that much. I mean, it’s bound to sink in, but not that much, just because it’s not like I’m a confessional songwriter or anything. When I move somewhere, I’m not all of a sudden pouring my new life out. Some of it might come out, but I couldn’t say exactly how.
Why did the New York Times do an article on your wedding reception?
I don’t know. Some random shit that happens. It was ‘A Night Out With’ in the Style section. Every week it’s a night out with a new person. It just happened to be that one was me, or the New Pornographers, and it happened to be my wedding reception. It was fun. It was a little interesting because it happens, and then a little while later, it leaks onto these music blogs and they’re writing about it. Because I guess there’s often not much to talk about. People start writing about your wedding reception and then all of a sudden, in the blogs, you’re reading comments where people are talking about your wedding reception. It was kind of surreal, because obviously in the comments sections, that’s where you have the real assholes going, ‘This wedding reception sounds lame.’ And you want to write in and go, ‘You know what’s really lame? What you just wrote.’
It seems like when people can write things anonymously, they just let loose sometimes.
But it’s funny when you know that. Like, my wife was showing me some review because it was a nice review, and then you can’t help but notice the comments section start, and the first comment is a guy like, ‘I want to fucking punch Carl Newman in the face when I see him.’ Which is just so absurd. You can’t help but think, ‘I can’t even be insulted by that—it’s too stupid.’ I have a strange feeling that the people who write that weigh about 98 pounds.
Do you have a different approach for writing A.C. Newman songs than you do for New Pornographers songs?
Not really. At any given moment, I’m just trying to write songs that I think are good. I wish I had such a mastery of my craft that I could just bend my songs to the will of whatever band I’m working with. But that’s not exactly how it works. That’s the strange thing I’ve realized about myself putting out solo records—that most people in bands, when they put out solo records, it’s because the band is broken up. Like, Stephen Malkmus put out Malkmus records after Pavement. But I’m in the middle of the New Pornographers. I’m just putting out solo records. And what’s more, I’m putting out solo records that—arguably—aren’t a massive departure. It’s not like I’m putting out really quiet records and going, ‘Oh, these are my quiet, acoustic records.’ I’m just doing more of what I do, and I think that confuses people. It makes people go, ‘Why did you make this record?’ Well, why not? Because it’s a record, and I felt like making it. That’s what I do.
Do you ever think about doing something completely different—like a hip-hop album or something?
That’s the tricky part: I feel like I’ve been getting flak in the last few years because I have been changing too much. Like Twin Cinema and Challengers I think are kind of considerably different records from Mass Romantic. Maybe I’m wrong, but if you play Challengers next to Mass Romantic, I think they sound quite different. So inasmuch as some can say I’m always working in the same kind of genre, there’s this other group of people that go, ‘Why are you changing so much? Why are you moving away from your formula that works?’
You can’t please everybody.
That’s true. Ricky Nelson said it.
Including A.C. Newman and New Pornographers albums, you’ve had five albums over the past six years. That seems like a daunting pace.
Yeah, that’s right—it’s basically five years and eight months since Electric Version. That’s my job, man. For a while there, I was on a really good clip, because Electric Version was in ’03, then Slow Wonder was in ’04, and Twin Cinema was in ’05. I wanted to do a record a year. But then I skipped ’06 and then, of course, put one out in ’07. I wanted to get Get Guilty out in 2008 just to keep on that schedule, but then I said, ‘Ah, fuck it.’ I was even thinking of trying to get two records out in 2009, but then I saw that there was no way I was going to get another Pornographers record done. So that’s going to have to wait until 2010. It’s my job, you know. I feel like I’m in such a privileged situation right now that I would be stupid to just sit on my ass. You’ve only got a certain number of years in your life where you can do this, where you can make records and people will buy them and it’s your job. So I want to make the most of it. It’s what I like doing, and I think there’s also this fear of, ‘It will all go away if I don’t work hard enough’—if that makes any sense. I’m doing pretty well, but I’m not at a point where I could just stop playing music and go, ‘I’m set for life.’ Although, the moment I get to that point, I’m quitting music. I’m doing all this bullshit for money. After that, I’ll just become like Jandek. I’ll just put out albums, you know, print 1,000 copies of them until I die.
What’s the first song or band you can remember liking as a child?
When I was a really little kid, I really loved ‘Billy Don’t Be a Hero.’ It’s Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods, which I just found out. I was really into ‘Crocodile Rock’ by Elton John. And I seem to recall really liking ‘I Think I Love You’ by the Partridge Family. In terms of bands, KISS was the first band I really got crazy into. And then Cheap Trick and Queen. You know, obvious stuff. I remember my brother going to a local record store—it was when punk rock was beginning to happen—and he said, ‘What’s your best punk rock album?’ And the guy at the record store gave him the Talking Heads’ 77. So I remember being a little kid and listening to 77 and just thinking, ‘This is the new music. This is crazy.’ It was interesting being a little kid at that time. The music scene—I was so fascinated by it. I remember walking into the record stores and seeing posters of Elvis Costello and Devo and thinking, ‘Wow, this music is so weird.’
What’s the first song you ever wrote?
I have no idea because I’ve never been much of a singer-songwriter. When I started playing music, it was essentially in a band where we got together and jammed, and somebody played a loud guitar riff, and I yelled over top of it. And I’d think, ‘Does that count as a song?’ I don’t know. Those might be the first songs I ever wrote, but I don’t consider them songs, really. I just consider it: I put some chords together and yelled over top of them. I never really thought of it as songwriting, so I never had an epiphany moment where I went, ‘Oh my God, this is my first song,’ and rushed out to play it for my girlfriend or something. I can never remember where songs come from because I’m not the kind of person that, you know, wrote a song one night in a motel room and can say, ‘And that was ‘Early Morning Rain,’ and that was the night I wrote that song.’
So you won’t be doing VH1 Storytellers?
No. So many songs, they just unfold. I’m too busy trying to figure out how to make them work to remember how it happened. It’s a lot of hard work. Songs don’t magically just come out of me—I have to work at it. And I have to use some of my critical faculties, as a music fan. I make the music, and then I sit back and go, ‘What would I think if I heard this song?’ Sometimes it’s interesting when you record something very quickly, like a demo, and then you don’t listen to it for a few days. Then you come back to it, and you don’t remember how your own song goes. That’s usually a good measure of whether the song works or not, when you’re listening to a song and you actually shock yourself, and you go, ‘Oh, this one’s pretty good.’ You know, few musicians get that kind of objectivity.
Do you have a favorite lyricist?
There are tons of them. I really like Arthur Lee, maybe because lyrically I feel a slight kinship with him in that a lot of it’s kind of insane and doesn’t make any sense, but it works amazingly well. I really like Vic Chesnutt—he’s amazing. People who are friends of mine I think are amazing, like Dan Bejar [Destroyer, the New Pornographers] and Will Sheff [Okkervil River]. It’s kind of intimidating having people like that around you in your life, because it makes everything you do feel really shitty.
At the same time, though, does it kind of force you to rise to the challenge?
Yeah, I think there’s a definite healthy competition there. When we were working on Mass Romantic, Neko had just put out Furnace Room Lullaby, and Dan had put out the Destroyer Thief record. And I listened to those records and thought, ‘I gotta try to keep up with the Joneses here. These records are really, really good.’ So it definitely helps to get pushed. I feel like I’m just trying to keep up with people. And it’s good to play in a band with somebody like Neko. It keeps your head from ever getting big.
What instrument do you most like the sound of?
I’ve been really into flutes recently. Flutes as a rock instrument, in a kind of marching band way. I just love baritone sax. You know, like old Sonics records. That baritone sax, when it’s just kicking out that low, distorted note—I’ve always thought that’s amazing. I love to use that as a trick—like when the chorus starts, just kick in a loud baritone sax. It kicks the song into another gear.

A.C. NEWMAN WITH DENT MAY ON THU., FEB. 26, AT THE TROUBADOUR, 9009 SANTA MONICA BLVD., WEST HOLLYWOOD. 9 PM / $15 / ALL AGES. TROUBADOUR.COM. A.C. NEWMAN’S GET GUILTY IS OUT NOW ON MATADOR. VISIT A.C. NEWMAN AT ACNEWMAN.NET OR MYSPACE.COM/ACNEWMAN.