Kathryn Calder talks The New Pornographers, playing at home and celebrating

Interview by Megan Cole

There are supergroups, and then there are The New Pornographers. Velvet Revolver tried it, and so did Audioslave, and the mix just wasn’t right (read: extreme sarcasm). This is not the case for The New Pornographers, who are one of the great supergroups. The New Pornographers are singer/songwriter Neko Case; Dan Bejar of Destroyer, Swan Lake and Hello, Blue Roses; John Collins of The Evaporators and Destroyer; Kurt Dahle of Mounties, Limblifter and Age of Electric; Todd Fancey of Limblifter; Carl Newman, also known as A.C. Newman; filmmaker Blaine Thurier; and Kathryn Calder of Immaculate Machine. All that talent has lead to multiple acclaimed albums and, most recently, after a four-year break, the band has released their new record, Brill Bruisers. We talked to vocalist/pianist/keyboardist Kathryn Calder about the new album, recording as part of a eight-piece super-band, and their upcoming show as part of Rifflandia, a music festival in Calder’s hometown of Victoria, BC.

So you’re playing Rifflandia in Victoria this weekend. What’s it like for you to play at home?
I really love playing hometown shows. Your friends and family are all there. It’s a really lovely time. I don’t know, it’s not like playing anywhere else. You don’t want to screw up. There is extra pressure to be good. That’s the funny thing about performing to a bunch of strangers, compared to playing for people you know; it’s actually harder in some ways and there seems to be a little bit more on the line. I never get nervous playing in front of a big crowd of people I don’t know, but as soon as there’s somebody I know, or a few people in the crowd, all of a sudden I start thinking about what I’m doing and I’m trying extra hard to be good. [Laughs.]

I think people out West have such a connection The New Pornographers’ music, and the different projects of all the other members of the band, that it’s always sort of special to have The New Pornographers on stage on the West Coast.
Cool. Yeah.

There’s been some anticipation around there being a new The New Pornographers album. Have you noticed that when you’ve been on stage that people are excited about hearing the new music?
Yeah. We’ve just done a little leg, a small run of almost warm-up shows, but it has been really nice to have that group of shows because we played the Edmonton festival, Sonic Boom in Vancouver and then we went to Halifax and played a little festival. We played in Detroit not too long ago, and that was the first show that was our own show. It was really interesting to note that the vibe of the show was way different because everyone was there specifically to see us. It’s different when you play a festival because there are your fans there, but there’s also a broader cross-section that might know a couple songs, but don’t know the new songs from the old songs. When we played Detroit, it was obvious that they knew a lot of the songs, and they could tell which ones were the new ones and they got a great reaction. The band is very excited about the new record, and we are all ready to go and get it out there for real. The reaction from fans about the new record has been great, and personally people have been sending me messages telling me how much they like the new record. You can never tell, but people have been going out of their way to say nice things, which is great.

I read that Carl Newman said Brill Bruisers was kind of a celebration record. Did that translate into the recording and creation of the album? Was there a celebration through the whole process?
The nice thing about this record was there was quite a bit of time between the last record and this one. You can kind of get a little bit overwhelmed with the work side of music if you don’t take a break sometimes and get back to what the whole point is. That’s not to say there wasn’t a point to the other records, there definitely was, but I felt like after the last record we really needed a break, and to dive right into the recording of another record would have felt really rushed. We took a couple years off and have been doing other things. It has been really nice coming back to the record, and that is sort of what I feel is part of the celebration part of it, even if that isn’t necessarily what Carl meant by that. Getting back together really felt good and it was the right time, and it felt like we were really ready to go, and in a positive place. Not that we weren’t in a positive place, but sometimes you just need that time off to connect with your home life and what is going on back at home, so you can have a healthy life away from home. That has all been really good, and positive. I feel like a hockey player, whenever I talk about this. [Laughs.] It feels really good, and really positive to get out there and give 100 percent and just give it our best. [Laughs.] Hockey quotes aside, we are really looking forward to playing and having the new record out and getting across the country to play it for people.

How does the recording process work for you guys, because you are all such busy musicians with solo work and other projects; like Neko Case just released her own album recently? Do you all get together in the studio and record, or do you do it in pieces?
We do it in pieces. We do it separately. In November, I went to Woodstock where Carl has a home recording studio, and I did my piano, synth and singing parts all in that eight-day period. That was a crazy whirlwind. I had just come in after Todd Fancey had been in doing his guitar parts. I had come in a few days after he had been there, but we didn’t cross paths at all. Carl is always there, and Dan Bejar is always there for his songs. It’s a really interesting process for me to be a fly on the wall for, because I’m part of the process, but I’m also kind of watching it happen from the side, a bit. I do my thing and then a couple months later I will hear where the song has gone since I have been in and that’s always such a crazy experience because my part has always changed quite a bit. Sometimes Carl will have taken my piano and put it through a vocoder and now Carl is actually singing, but with my piano, so sometimes I have no idea what parts I actually played on the record, because they have all morphed into something else. Sometimes I can hear them if they are an obvious piano sound, and I know I definitely did that. It’s a really neat process.

The New Pornographers‘ Brill Bruisers is available now on Matador Records.