In spite of the various successful solo careers that have arisen from the Vancouver-spawned collective The New Pornographers, the unit’s wheels are still turning after nearly a quarter century together. Today they’ve announced their ninth studio album and debut project with Merge Records titled Continue as a Guest, with the LP’s lead single “Really Really Light” coming together from a demo written with co-founding-member Dan Bejar around the time of the group’s 2014 release Brill Bruisers.
“Part of my process throughout the years has been messing with things I never finished,” the band’s A.C. Newman shares. “I really liked Dan’s chorus, and for a while I was just trying to write something that I felt like belonged with it. 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.”
“Really Really Light,” which soars on the group’s instantly recognizable indie-pop formula, sits alongside a collaboration with Speedy Ortiz’s Sadie Dupuis on the tracklist additionally featuring core members Newman, Neko Case, Kathryn Calder, John Collins, Todd Fancey, and Joe Seiders. Check out the slightly surreal Christian Cerezo–directed visual for the track below, which sees the band coaching a figure skater through her routine on a warehouse’s concrete floor, and make sure to catch the band on their upcoming tour at the dates listed here—a portion of the presale money will benefit the abortion fund Frontera Fund.
