The New Pornographers announce new album ‘Continue as a Guest’
Canadian supergroup The New Pornographers have returned to announce their latest collaboration. Continue as a Guest will be the collective’s ninth album and first since 2019’s In the Morse Code of Brake Lights.
Roll call: who makes up the current iteration of The New Pornographers? The group shuffles through members and lets artists come and go as they please. This incarnation of the band will feature A.C. Newman, Neko Case, Kathryn Calder, John Collins, Todd Fancey, and Joe Seiders. Continue as a Guest also features contributions from saxophonist Zach Djanikian and Sadie Dupuis, who co-wrote the song ‘Firework in the Falling Snow’.
Although he rejoined the group on their most recent tour celebrating the anniversaries of their albums Mass Romantic and Twin Cinema, Destroyer frontman Dan Bejar is not among the members who are contributing to Continue as a Guest. Bejar did help write the album’s leadoff track and first single, ‘Really Really Light’, however.
“I really like Dan’s chorus, and for a while I was just trying to write something that I felt like belonged with it,” Newman said in a statement. “I was thinking of the Aloe Blacc song ‘The Man’ which interpolated the chorus from Elton John’s ‘Your Song’ and thought it would be fun to interpolate a song that no one knows… It became a game of writing a verse that felt like a part of the same song. In my mind, I was striving for a little Jeff Lynne–era Tom Petty, a classic go-to.”
Bejar’s style can definitely be heard in the song’s mix of pop melodies and electro-rock eclectics. Throughout most of the song, though, it’s the identities of Newman and Case who shine brightest. As the pair harmonize throughout the track, ‘Really Really Light’ pulses and prods through a composition that sounds like an expert indie rock committee crafted it (which, in essence, is the mission statement of The New Pornographers).
Check out the video for ‘Really Really Light’ down below. Continue as a Guest is set for a March 31st release.
Continue as a Guest tracklist:
1. ‘Really Really Light’
2. ‘Pontius Pilate’s Home Movies’
3. ‘Cat and Mouse with the Light’
4. ‘Last and Beautiful’
5. ‘Continue as a Guest’
6. ‘Bottle Episodes’
7. ‘Marie and the Undersea’
8. ‘Angelcover’
9. ‘Firework in the Falling Snow’
10. ‘Wish Automatic Suite’
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