The New Pornographers

Newly signed to Merge Records, The New Pornographers announce new album Continue As Guest due 31st March and share first taste with new single Really Really Light.

A co-write with Dan Bejar (Destroyer), “Really Really Light”, imbued with the characteristic melodic smarts that have long made The New Pornographers such an engaging prospect, is a refashioning of a cutting-room-floor track from the band’s acclaimed 2014 album Brill Bruisers.

“Part of my process throughout the years has been messing with things I never finished. I really liked Dan’s chorus, and for a while I was just trying to write something that I felt like belonged with it,” A.C. Newman shares. “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. Not trying to sound like Aloe Blacc, just doing some interpolating of my own. 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.”

The bands ninth studio album, Newman began work on Continue as a Guest at his home in Woodstock, New York after the band had finished touring 2019’s album In The Morse Code Of Brake Lights. Taking on themes of isolation and collapse, following the ambivalence of day-to-day life during the pandemic and the endless pitfalls of living online. Newman says that Continue as a Guest’s title track also addresses the continually rolling concerns that come with being in a band for so long. “The idea of continuing as a guest felt very apropos to the times,” he explains. “Feeling out of place in culture, in society - not feeling like a part of any zeitgeist, but happy to be separate and living your simple life, your long fade-out. Find your own little nowhere, find some space to fall apart, continue as a guest.”

Produced by Newman The 10-track album features compatriots Neko Case, Kathryn Calder, John Collins, Todd Fancey and Joe Seiders as well as contributions from saxophonist Zach Djanikian and in addition to the Bejar co-write, the glimmering track "Firework in the Falling Snow" was co-penned by Sadie Dupuis (Speedy Ortiz, Sad13).

Due 31st March Via Mege Records Pre Order ‘Continue As Guest’ here.