Jason Creps

A.C. is the one in the middle

Ten years and five albums into their career, the New Pornographers are one of modern rock's more interesting success stories. A.C. Newman, Neko Case, and Dan Bejar of cult-prog act Destroyer dominate the group, all three expert songwriters at this point. Combined, their new album Together follows the same line that they've always towed: classic, 1960s Nuggets-style garage-rock hooks and quirky lyrics, with Newman commanding a majority of the songwriting duties. With that much talent in one space, you might suspect that the New Pornographers struggle with sounding bloated. But they don't overdo it: songs rarely go over four minutes and consistency is their defining quality.

This weekend the New Pornographers play two shows: the cavernous Terminal 5 on Saturday, June 19, and the tiny Bell House on Sunday, June 20. We caught up with Newman earlier this week in his Toronto hotel room.

We know you all read Nerve for the articles, so where was the 60-comment slow-news post on this Q&A from AC Newman talking about Dan Bejar's writing process ("I kind of write with my heart, and Dan writes with his dick, I guess") and how his band gets called "nerdy"?

You've joked about being a nerdy band. Was the name a way to make you sound less nerdy?

You know, we never called ourselves that. It just happened. I think I'm to blame for the nerdy element. What's funny is that [critics] who call us a nerdy band are infinitely nerdier than us. As if the writer is James Spader in a John Hughes movie or something. It's been a dream of mine to start a website that has pictures of rock writers, with little captions that say, "Look at this asshole." But if you're nice, you stay off the list.

I'm nice.
Then you're okay. You won't suffer the wrath of my blog, which will be called lookatthisasshole.blogspot. I'm only after the people who shouldn't be seen.

At press post time, the blogger account lookatthisasshole.blogspot.com had not been claimed.

Update: Now it has. Thank God we've been a service to somebody.

P.S. Gonna make it easy on you, AC MJ/JH. Here's SOTC's mugshot!

[Nerve Q&A with AC Newman]