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