In every one of us, there's a sugar-sweet pop freak yearning to get out. The quickest way to satiate this little imp is to purchase a copy of the New Pornographers' Mass Romantic, an album so chock-full of root-canal-inducingly sweet hooks that England has banned it, for fear of further dental disasters. These Vancouverites (if that's a word) are all veterans of that city's music scene, which means that this is a sort of "supergroup", even if you haven't heard most of the bands in question. Fronted by principal songwriter Carl Newman and the lovely, lovely Neko Case, the band's live show does justice to its pristinely produced recorded sound, with the aforementioned vocalists joined by drummer/singer John Collins (who fills in live for New Pornographer/Destroyer frontman Dan Bejar). Bassist Kurt Dahle, keyboard player Blaine Thurier, and keyboard/guitarist Todd Fancey round out the band's sound, and make for a fairly full stage (Not that anybody can tear his eyes off of Neko. At least, I can't.).

Okay, so I'm just a teensy bit bitter that Neko couldn't make it to the interview I conducted with Carl and Blaine when the band blew through Brooklyn last month. Fortunately, the gentlemen in question were interesting, insightful, and willing to riff on Canada to my heart's content.

Splendid: Has Jimmy Swaggart taken note of your appropriation of his quote for your band name?

Carl: I'm sure he never will. No, we haven't heard anything.

Splendid: Every time I mention your band to someone, the inevitable reaction is "New...what?" Has your name ever gotten you into any trouble?

Carl: No, just at the border. They've been holding our merchandise for a few days extra just because of our name.

Blaine: Yeah, when I'm e-mailing something about the band, I try not to use "porn" in the subject line.

Carl: Is that why we always get porn shit sent to the band's hotmail account?

Blaine: No, I think they send that to everybody.

Carl: Actually, some guy a few nights ago said something interesting. He said, "New Pornographers? Is that a Tom Wolfe reference?" He had just been reading an essay by Tom Wolfe in which he had written that violence is the new pornography. I thought that was funny: the new pornography is either violence or music.

Splendid: Are you a violent band?

Carl: No. Well, Neko is.

Splendid: Yeah. You can tell. From what I understand, the album was made in fits and starts, but the final product sounds very much like a collection of songs that really sort of hold together. To what do you ascribe that?

Blaine: Accident?

Carl: Yeah. I mean, we were trying to make them sound similar.

Blaine: Similar but different.

Carl: Various tricks were used, like gang vocals.

Splendid: Explain "gang vocals".

Carl: Well, like "Breaking The Law", at the end, it sounds like a ton of people singing together. Maybe it was the sequencing, too. "Mass Romantic" ends with what sounds like a big group of people singing the chorus, and then the end of the album sounds like a bunch of people singing the big gang chorus. I kind of wanted to use the two of those as bookends; maybe that helps, to have some vague concept of how it should begin and end, and that results in there seeming to be some concept for the record.

Splendid: I've noticed, especially on the songs that you write, Carl, that you tend to write in movements; that is, you tend to develop a theme and then, with the same chords, develop a completely different idea. And you do this on virtually every song, which makes them more interesting.

Carl: I do that?

Blaine: He does do that. I had never thought about it before.

Carl: You mean, like, the end codas?

Splendid: Yeah, especially on "Letter From an Occupant" and "Mass Romantic", you've got practically three separate songs in each track. Is that just the way the writing progressed, or did you have different ideas that you ended up sticking together because they worked well as one piece?

Carl: I don't know. Sometimes I've left space in songs, thinking I'll put something in there later. In "Mass Romantic", that kind of Beach Boys middle-break? That was kind of put there, because, what the hell? The end was just kind of randomly tacked on. I just improvised it at one practice, and it ended up being really good. Which is a rarity.

Splendid: You mentioned the Beach Boys, and from reading reviews of your album, I have noticed numerous Brian Wilson comparisons, both because of the songs' structures, and I think because of the vocal harmonies. Is that fair? Is he a big influence on you?

Carl: Yeah, but a totally unconscious influence. I think he's great, but I've never gone out trying to be Brian Wilson. But it's hard, because he was just one of the greats at writing pop songs. I mean, I'm sure we sound like The Kinks, too.

Splendid: Everybody sounds a bit like the Kinks eventually, don't you think?

Carl: I think so. And it's like, how can you do vocal harmonies without sounding like the Beach Boys? Unless you go in some weird direction, but then you sound stupid, you know? I mean, I'd rather sound like them than, like, Zappa or something. I mean, that's what happens when you start trying too hard, I think.

Splendid: Most, if not all, of you guys have other musical projects...

Carl: Actually, this is the only thing that I do now.

Splendid: Really? Well, I was going to ask: since the album's doing well...

Carl: It's way more popular than anything else I've ever done.

Splendid: So how is that affecting the other bands that people are involved in, if the Pornographers were a side project to start with?

Blaine: I don't think anybody thought of it as a "side project" from the beginning. I mean, everybody might have had other things, but nobody thought, "Well, let's do this thing as a little hobby, and then just leave it". We just wanted to play together, basically. Carl had some songs, so we did it. Nobody thought of it as a little side thing at all.

Carl: There was a vague idea like "How could we lose?"

Blaine: The one thing we did think about was the gig poster, you know? "Members of Zumpano, Superconductor, Neko Case, Destroyer", you know, that was the extent of it. And then, the "supergroup" thing got kind of snapped up.

Carl: We were kind of shocked that people really didn't like us that much initially. Our first show was a really big success, and then, it seemed like people in Vancouver just weren't that interested anymore. There's a Destroyer song written by Dan...what is it, "City of Daughters"? It has some line about how "Vancouver has refused the new pornography". That was just a line he threw in there about how perplexed he was that people just weren't that into us.

Splendid: Are you talking about radio play?

Carl: No, just in terms of having shows and not that many people showing up.

Splendid: Wasn't "Letter From An Occupant" written before all of the other songs?

Carl: No, there's a lot of old songs on there. It's hard to even keep track of how old they are.

Splendid: How long was this a project before there was an album?

Carl: We started playing in '97, but we didn't practice that much, because our drummer was hard to nail down. He was in...what, three or four other bands?

Splendid: Ah, the problems of modern indie rock.

Carl: Yeah. And then we had four of them finished by mid-'98. And it was two years later before we had the other eight. For a bunch of stupid reasons. It was hard to get together: John was always busy recording other things, and we always had to be on the back-burner because we weren't a paying gig. It was nice in the end to feel somehow validated that we finished it.

Splendid: "Letter From An Occupant" did come out on a compilation, though, right?

Carl and Blaine: Right.

Splendid: And that generated some buzz, right?

Carl: Canadian buzz.

Blaine: Canadian buzz is like buzz with one "zed".

Splendid: I think we have a pull-quote. Since the record has started doing well, is it better-known now in the US or Canada?

Carl: I guess we're better-known in Canada, but we don't care.

Splendid: Is that a little bit self-deprecating?

Carl: It just seems kind of ridiculous to pursue Canadian fame, because all you have to do is get big in the US and all of the Canadians will slobber all over you.

Blaine: It's true.

Splendid: I always thought Canada was a big enough base that a band could be a success there.

Carl: It is. There are tons of bands that just exist solely on touring Canada, and never come to the States because they couldn't handle not being loved. It's like a secure little womb for a lot of bands. I don't think that we wanted that at all. It doesn't feel like success to only be liked in Canada, because they have government regulations to force radio stations to play 30 percent Can con.

Blaine: "Can con" is "Canadian content".

Carl: So there are rock stars in Canada that should be thanking the government.

Blaine: Because they're really shitty. They have a system of points, based on who worked on it. If you get less than six out of ten points on this little list, you're not considered Canadian. Bryan Adams didn't make the six once.

Carl: There's four things, like "producer, label, musicians, and..."

Splendid: So you can be a Canadian artist, but not be considered Canadian by the government if not enough Canadians worked on your album?

Blaine: Yeah. You don't get the official "Can con" stamp.

Carl: If I put out a record recorded in New York, with a New York producer, that was all covers of some American songwriter, it wouldn't count as Canadian. Yet, there are ridiculous things that do count. Like the Cult, because Ian Astbury lived in Ontario for a while, and they recorded in Vancouver.

Splendid: Well, commercial radio in the US is pretty across-the-board terrible. Do you find these regulations make the radio in Canada any better?

Carl: We snuck on a few big radio stations, and had a moderate hit in Vancouver and Toronto.

Splendid: It seems to me that bands like you guys, and other really great pop bands, I don't see why something that's that easily accessible and toe-tapping doesn't get onto American radio stations.

Carl: People don't want to hear good music.

Blaine: No matter where it's from.

Splendid: But don't they?

Carl: People don't even know what it is.

Splendid: But if I play your album for someone who doesn't listen to anything that's even slightly off the beaten path, they always like it. I just think they never hear it.

Carl: I don't know. Maybe it is some sort of payola thing. I mean, if this had come out on some major label, and we were forced on all of these radio stations, and somebody greased a lot of palms, maybe we could have sold half-a-million or so.

Splendid: I hear you've got a new video, for "Slow Descent Into Alcoholism".

Carl: Oh, we didn't make it. The guy who made our first video made it on his own time. He made this movie, called FUBAR, which showed at Sundance recently, and he used the two main characters, two Canadian losers...

Blaine: Hosers.

Carl: That's Canadian losers.

Splendid: I know. We Americans have all seen Strange Brew about six hundred times. So he just used the song in that?

Carl: No, he took the stars of his film, and made them the stars of our video. So it's this weird kind of tie-in.

Splendid: If you're not Puff Daddy, where do you get your videos seen?

Blaine: You don't.

Carl: Well, apparently, our first video got shown on MTV2 a couple of times. And MuchMusic. When you think who you're competing against, it's ridiculous. Especially on video channels, since there's not nearly as many of them as radio stations.

Blaine: Much lower rotation. We got edged out by Nickelback, I think. They're from Alberta. They're fuckin' huge.

Splendid: What's the best thing, aside from playing, about being on tour?

Carl: That's a tough one.

Blaine: Sharing the laughter.

Carl: Yeah, there's that.

Splendid: Well, you get to see beautiful, scenic Brooklyn.

Blaine: Yeah, there's that, too. Seeing places like New York is great.

Carl: It does the heart and soul good to be playing and see lots and lots of cute girls at your shows. You feel like you're really doing the right thing.

Splendid: Worst thing?

Carl: Getting shit stolen. Or lost. Or left. What was maddening was that last night, there was the inter-band argument about whether or not we should have left our shit in the van or taken it in. It's one of those ridiculous situations that no one could have conceived, but you want to blame someone about later.

Blaine: That leads down the wrong path.

Carl: Actually, it's been pretty nice on tour, seeing all of the people. And there have been some nice surprises.

Blaine: Like the show in Atlanta. We had no idea how we'd do there.

Carl: And DC. We didn't know that would be such a big show. There must have been about four or five hundred people there. There were people dancing on the stage with us.

Blaine: On tour, there's a lot of dancing. And sharing.

Splendid: Do you guys do a lot of pranking?

Carl: Not really, but I have noticed that over the last couple of days, people have been putting stuff in other people's drinks.

Blaine: I've had peanut shells in my coffee.

Carl: Blaine put his napkin in my salsa. That was pretty wacky. I had to order more salsa!

Blaine: A napkin in salsa!

Carl: Who ever heard of such craziness?

Splendid: So it's not exactly Keith Moon. No TVs through anyone's window.

Carl: No, but sometimes I'll tap him on one shoulder when I'm really standing behind the other shoulder!

Splendid: What's the truest Canadian stereotype?

Blaine: Politeness.

Carl: I've met some Newfies who are pretty stupid.

Blaine: As seen in The Shipping News.

Splendid: We Americans believe that you guys say "eh" about every three seconds. You guys haven't said it once.

Carl: That's not really a city thing. You know, like if you go to Atlanta, you don't hear people going (bad Canadian impression of a southern accent) "Well, hey, there, how ya doin'?" But you hear people talking like that in rural Alberta. It's just a generic hick accent, no matter where you go.

Splendid: You can get that within an hour of NYC, in Connecticut. Lots of mullets.

Carl: That reminds me of some great names for mullets my friend gave me. One was "The Canadian Passport". Another was "The Alberta Aristocrat".

Blaine: "The Manitoba Compromise".

Carl: "The Kentucky Waterfall".

Splendid: For a band that has so many overdubs and layers, you guys do a great job recreating that sound live. I saw Mercury Rev recently, and they had trouble reproducing a lot of the sounds on their albums during their live versions. All of those strings and horns.

Carl: I thought horns and strings were overused in modern-day indie rock, so we wanted to stay away from that. We had a saxophone come in, but that was pretty easy.

Splendid: That was one of the few tasteful uses of the saxophone in a rock song I've heard recently.

Carl: The only thing a saxophone's good for is that sonic squealing.

Blaine: The honking.

Splendid: Too often, there's a Bruce Springsteen syndrome, whereby you have to find something for Clarence to do all of the time.

Carl: Clarence Clemons, I think, really ruined the saxophone. I hated it.

Splendid: I say that all of the time.

Carl: But if you listen to old Roxy Music, that's a great use of the saxophone. I think that's what we were going for.

Splendid: How important for your album was the PR for Neko's solo album that was out at the time Mass Romantic came out?

Carl: I don't know. I think so. I toured with her for a couple of months, and her audience consists of these older, alt-country fans for the most part. It's a completely different audience. I thought they would hate our album because it wasn't country, but it's definitely helped. That alt-country scene, fuck I hated being in the middle of that. Neko, The Handsome Family, and Trailer Bride were the only bands that were really good. And Jim and Jennie and the Pinetops. There are not nearly enough cute girls in the alt-country scene. Lots of sweaty, forty-ish stalker guys. And if somebody cute does come into the scene, they get stalked.

Splendid: Agree or disagree: your lyrics tend to be more about single, pithy phrases than whole verses.

Carl: Yeah, definitely. But not always.

Splendid: It sounds a lot of the time like you came up with a great line...

Carl: And built a song around it. Yeah, that's about it.

Splendid: Who owns that painting on the cover?

Carl: I do.

Splendid: Is it displayed prominently in your house?

Carl: You see it when you walk through the front door. That's how it ended up being the album cover.

Splendid: Has the anonymous painter come forward since you started touring?

Carl: I haven't heard anything. I hope the popularity of that record will make the painting worth something. I'd sell it, but I've got to get something good for it. Especially now that it's the album cover.

Splendid: Last time you guys came through, everything went really well, except for one really "New Yawk" guy who kept yelling for you to play another song anytime you paused for a moment. Does that happen a lot?

Carl: That always happens.

Splendid: I didn't know if I had to apologize for New York there. You guys are pretty funny, actually.

Carl: Well, that's what we think. Isn't that what we said to the guy? "I don't know why you want us to stop talking when we're so funny." We're not actually a good band to heckle, I don't think. It would be tough for a heckler to win with us. I think the combination of three people with microphones on stage means we're going to win. I always think it's lame when the band gets mad at the audience. In Athens, the night before we played, I went to see this band called The Brian Jonestown Massacre, and the audience was heckling the band just for their own amusement. They didn't know that the madder they got, the more amusing they were. Between songs, someone would yell "You suck! Get off the stage." And then the band would try to insult them as much as they could back, and just missed the point completely.

Splendid: Is there an actual Mary Martin Show?

Carl: No, no.

Splendid: Again, it could have been some sort of Canadian thing.

Carl: It was just about a female archetype that I invented in my head.

Splendid: A Peter Pan-based female archetype?

Carl: No. I had an idea of what she looked like in my head, but when I saw a picture of her later, I realized I really didn't know what she looked like. When I thought of her, I thought of a really cute, elfin, petite girl.

Blaine: I picture her wearing a toque.

Carl: Toque, definitely.

Splendid: Are you sick of playing the songs on this album now? With the album coming out on Matador Europe, it looks like another round of touring with the same songs.

Carl: I don't really mind, because we haven't been playing them that long, and they've kind of taken on a life of their own. Sometimes, there are songs that I wrote that seem like covers now. After a while, the distance between the moment of creation, then playing it with a band, then recording, mixing, and overdubbing, and playing it live, it's so far that it starts to seem like somebody else's song. And I love playing Dan's songs, just because I think they're such great songs.

Splendid: Does he ever play with you guys?

Carl: He hasn't in a while, though he's recording with us now.

Splendid: Was he on tour with Destroyer?

Carl: He's only done a small amount of Destroyer touring. He's living in Vancouver now, though he lived in Montreal for a while, and he's only lived in Vancouver for a month. He was gone for, like, fourteen months.

Splendid: Do you expect him to be a more active part of the band now?

Carl: I don't know. Destroyer is definitely his priority. What's lucky is that we can function as a band without him. We can record with him, and then go out on tour without him, and that's how people know us now, from the road. So they're not shocked when Dan's not there on tour.

Splendid: To stretch a tenuous analogy, you could say he's doing a Brian Wilson for your band. You leave him in the sandbox with the piano, and you go on tour.

Carl: Exactly. We've got a great advantage, because we've got two Brian Wilsons in the band -- the one that tours with the band, and the one that doesn't. That's our recipe for success.