A.C. Newman breaks the rules with Get Guilty

By Erik Adams
Published: January 20th, 2009 | 12:40pm

In 2003, A.C. Newman was certain that the New Pornagraphers’ songs were supposed to sound a certain way. Having evolved from the loose collective of friends that released the “Letter From An Occupant” single into the living, breathing, touring rock band that put out Mass Romantic and Electric Version — the Pornos-crafted, whip-smart, power pop that was just as likely to birth immortal earworms as it was to make cryptic jabs at the second Bush administration. But on the heels of Newman’s first solo record, 2004’s The Slow Wonder, the things that previously defined “the New Pornographers sound” — frenetic tempos, driving keyboard lines, bombastic sing-along choruses — began to play less of a role. It was a crime at the time; but the laws, they changed ’em.

“In the years since I’ve made Slow Wonder, I’ve thrown all the rules out the window,” Newman said on the phone from his home in Brooklyn. “In the New Pornographers, we started out very upbeat and very ‘rock,’ and through the years I’ve been fighting it and getting more and more mellow.”

So it comes as a bit of a shock that “There Are Maybe Ten Or Twelve,” the first track from Newman’s second solo effort Get Guilty (Matador), opens with six bars of near-orchestral pomp. The intro doesn’t just throw the rules out the window, it attaches them to a Looney Tunes–style rocket, launching them into the sky to explode in bursts of overdriven guitar and crashing cymbals. “I think I wanted to make it a little more ‘rock,’ just to be contrary,” Newman said of the record.

“There Are Maybe Ten Or Twelve” sets the course for the rest of Get Guilty. Gone is the more direct “new city, new love” vibe of 2007’s New Pornographers’ record Challengers. That vibe is replaced by cryptic tales of mischievous gods and submarines pulling into Swedish ports. It may sound like an intentional return to maximal rocknroll, but the way Newman told it, Get Guilty’s creation was less than purposeful. “That’s a strange part of it; in a lot of ways, I didn’t write these songs specifically for a solo album,” he said. “It was just me going into a studio, and I just started working, and a few months later, this was the record that came out. I didn’t really plan it, it unfolded in the studio.”

Admitting that he doesn’t have the world’s greatest work ethic, Newman said that when he’s in songwriting mode, he gets downright obsessive-compulsive. “I’d like to be the guy who sits down with his notebook or Pro Tools and is very constructive every day. But a lot of it is very halfass he said. “When I’m trying to write, it’s just something I think about when I’m walking down the street. That’s a convenient part about having songwriting as a job; I can just be running my errands and wandering down the street with my mind wandering, trying to write things in my head.”

Newman traded wandering the streets of Vancouver for wandering the streets of Brooklyn in 2007. The move has offered some unique opportunities for collaboration, like singing backup for Feist on the Late Show with David Letterman and joining Les Savy Fav frontman Tim Harrington and a bevy of other indie stars for the joke benefit single “USA for Affluence.” Newman’s relocation also gave him a shared zip code with pop-noir singer-songwriter Nicole Atkins, who lent her voice to several tracks on Get Guilty. “I’m drawn to Nicole Atkins’ voice the same way I was drawn to Neko [Case’s] voice when I first heard it 12 years ago. She has a killer voice. And you think, ‘I want to get that person to sing with me. That person will make me look better.’”

Not that Newman finds his own voice inferior; he’s just found that there’s no way to be objective about it. And semantically, one can’t like the way one’s voice sounds and be a decent person. “That’s like an insult if you say, ‘Ah, that person really loves the sound of their own voice,’” he said. “You’re basically saying they’re an asshole. In trying not to be an asshole, you’ve got to hate your own voice.”

Even if he didn’t have a new record coming out, Newman’s more likely to hear his own voice coming back at him these days. His songs have soundtracked everything from Gilmore Girls to The Secret Diary of a Call Girl, and the University of Phoenix found the Pornos' "Bleeding Heart Show" so inspirational, it decided to use the song in a series of television spots. Then there was Rock Band, which made millions of gamers keep perfect time with the title track from Electric Version. And though he said he didn’t know how Get Guilty could subtly penetrate the mainstream (My suggestion in keeping with the “girl” theme: An episode of Gossip Girl that opens with character Chuck Bass waking up surrounded by empty liquor bottles and expensive underthings, “Thunderbolts” stuck in his head.), Newman said it’s just cool that his past work has been able to do so.

“Even when you’re not in the mainstream, it’s nice to just have your one foot in the mainstream. Even if you’re just a little footnote that 20 years down the line, somebody will be like, ‘Oh, I remember this song — the song from Rock Band. I hated this song. This song is difficult.”

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For more information about A.C. Newman, check out his MySpace