Kill Your Click Track
The guilty pleasures and unlikely rhythms of A.C. Newman.
NEWMAN'S OWN: Since 2000's "Letter from an Occupant," A.C. Newman has gone from obscure musician to fêted indie-pop auteur.
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There's always been room in music for the absurd. From Robyn Hitchcock to Lil Wayne, lyricists with a flair for non sequiturs and private word-games have helped broaden and color the language of popular songs.
In 2000, A.C. (aka Carl) Newman leapt to the upper echelons of this pack on the merits of a single composition, "Letter from an Occupant." That song, the first release from his Canadian indie conglomerate the New Pornographers, captivated music nerds and rock critics with its unabashed guitar hooks and soaring vocals from Neko Case, who confidently belted an utterly confounding yet captivating lyric.
It was arguably one of the early songs that reached a significant audience through the Internet. (It's hard to believe the recording is almost 10 years old.) Since then, Newman has gone from obscure musician to fêted indie-pop auteur. He can now afford to take time off from the band to craft ingeniously eccentric solo albums, the kind that 20 or 30 years ago would have languished in obscurity, unfairly buried in used bins, and spoken about in hushed, reverent tones.
Newman's first solo album, 2004's The Slow Wonder, was filled with upside-down arrangements and eerie scenarios. At times, it sounded like the modern-day equivalent of David Bowie's Lodger, one of The Thin White Duke's strangest (and most underrated) albums.
His follow-up, Get Guilty (Matador), is equally odd, and equally beguiling. Working with musicians like Mates of State and Superchunk/Mountain Goats drummer Jon Wurster, Newman further eschews the chewy, AM radio-derived sound that the New Pornographers once specialized in. Rather, the music here is intimate but precisely considered, dominated by acoustic and e-bowed guitars and drum parts that are rarely content to merely blast out a 4/4 beat.
"I'm always trying to stretch within the limits of what I do," admits Newman over the phone. "I know the natural thing for me to do is to write pop songs. But I'm always trying to mess with it."
Much of the percussion on the album acquires an almost symphonic edge. "I'm not a drummer, so when I do play percussion on a song, it always is kind of orchestral. I'm not playing a rock beat, I'm usually hitting a tom, or playing a shaker or a tambourine, and the combination of those creates something more akin to a percussionist in an orchestra."
The songs on Get Guilty are rhythmically unlikely in other ways. Newman is fond of playing with time signatures and dropped or extra beats, creating unexpected hooks by seemingly arriving at a chorus earlier than expected. "Sometimes, I am trying to create a strange kind of tension, like starting on the second beat instead of the first beat. The song 'Like a Hitman, Like a Dancer,' which really threw off my band at the beginning, basically goes 1-2-3-4-1." He hums the riff.
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Similar Newman techniques include "adding two beats to a bar, stretching something out a couple extra beats. I always like doing things like that. It just creates an interesting tension, and in a subtle enough way that people don't know what you're doing."
The words, as per usual, are tantalizingly elliptical. Because his solo work doesn't sound as busy as the New Pornographers, the off-kilter, darting lyrics are less likely to be buried underneath brazen arrangements. The lyrics of "Submarines of Stockholm" and "Young Atlantis" sound like the sinister plotlines to as-yet-unmade foreign films. "Like a Hitman, Like a Dancer" summarizes the plotline of an actual foreign film, 1967's Le Samourai.
"I've never really been that into the idea of writing just a straight-ahead confessional about my life or writing stories about small-town America," he says. "I think I've always wanted to be more like Arthur Lee of Love. Even [Bob] Dylan — a lot of Dylan doesn't make much sense. But it's great. I just love the sound of the words, which goes back to Dylan Thomas, who is, I think, an amazing poet, because of the sound of his words, more than the content."
Once this solo tour ends, Newman will go right back to writing the next New Pornographers album. He keeps the productivity rate high by continually revisiting uncompleted song scraps. "If I ever feel like I'm having some kind of creative block, I just go back and listen to stuff that I've worked on that I haven't been able to finish. There's always a lot of stuff lying around. I'm never completely caught up."
A.C. Newman plays Tue., March 17, 9 p.m., $12, with The Broken West, Johnny Brenda's, 1201 N. Frankford Ave., 215-739-9684, johnnybrendas.com.
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