Review: The New Pornographers’s In the Morse Code of Brake Lights

The album is, at least by the group’s typical power-pop standards, a heavier, murkier affair.

The New Pornographers
Photo: Concord Records

Since their inception, the New Pornographers have often been labeled a “supergroup.” Since A.C. Newman’s voice and guitar has rarely hogged the spotlight, it’s been easy to overlook the fact that he’s very much the mastermind behind the Canadian indie rock band’s coherent, but transcendently harmonious, pop sound. As a co-producer, he’s always displayed a nearly Brian Wilson-level gift for melding the group’s dizzying arsenal of talents, from Neko Case’s clarion alto to Dan Bejar’s quirky change-of-pace songs.

In the Morse Code of the Brake Lights is the band’s second album without Bejar and original drummer Kurt Dahle. But whereas 2017’s Whiteout Conditions buzzed along in familiar New Pornos fashion, with a bright, fizzy krautrock vibe and an equitable mix of vocalists, Brake Lights is, at least by the group’s typical power-pop standards, a heavier, murkier affair, with Newman’s voice sitting front and center for much of its duration. It doesn’t sound like one of Newman’s more intimate, acoustic-focused solo albums, exactly—too many orchestral flourishes, hyperactive keyboards, and Case showcases for that—but at least half of it feels more like A.C. Newman & Friends than any of the band’s previous efforts.

This has its benefits, introducing new shades to the New Pornos palette. Most of the band’s albums commence with a hopped-up drumbeat or a blaring guitar riff, but Brake Lights’s opening track, “You’ll Need a Backseat Driver,” begins instead with a disorienting minor-key swirl of tremolo guitar and plinking noises that takes a few seconds to lock into rhythm. A sugar-rush of a chorus arrives soon enough—not to mention a delicious circular bassline by John Collins—but the song’s darker, clanging style does enough to establish that this album isn’t going to be offering up more of the band’s usual high-art pop.

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Even lyrically, “You’ll Need a Backseat Driver” establishes a new tone via a repeated refrain (which provides the album’s title), hinting that Newman is trying to send a clear message this time around. The nature of his wordplay is typically such that it can be hard to tell if he’s actually writing about something or just rhyming complementary syllables. But it’s not difficult to parse the political malaise that hangs over songs like “Need Some Giants” and the majestic slow jam “Higher Beams,” on which Newman offers a pointed “Fuck you for nothing.”

Many of the album’s charms are indeed born of the unexpected. “Colossus of Rhodes,” the band’s blusteriest track to date, rumbles along like the Hindenburg on a crest of concert-style piano, gurgling synths, and dramatic string swells that would sound absurdly overblown if not for Case belting the hell out of it with her peeling cathedral bell of a voice. The band also retreats somewhat from the heavy electronic focus of their last two albums, featuring a liberal and compelling use of strings, which scrape and wobble throughout much of Brake Lights.

When the album strays from its relatively sober tone, though, it loses some of its punch. The series of characteristically hooky but cottony songs that comprise its latter half might have sounded less monotonous had they been broken up by an edgier Bejar track or two. The album would also benefit from Kurt Dahle’s superb, rhythmically complex drumming. Dahle’s touch is palpably missed on the trickier songs here, like the lurching “Dreamlike and on the Rush.”

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“The Surprise Knock” is a euphoric rush of ecstatic guy/girl harmonies and crisp guitars that stands alongside the likes of “The Laws Have Changed,” “Twin Cinema,” and almost any other of the band’s classic 2000s singles. But the track’s inclusion here feels like a consciously retro move (“Why don’t we play this song like New Pornographers 2005?” Newman says in the album’s press notes). It only throws into relief that, after 20 years and various personnel changes, the New Pornographers are a different band than they used to be.

Score: 
 Label: Concord  Release Date: September 27, 2019  Buy: Amazon

Jeremy Winograd

Jeremy Winograd studied music and writing at Bennington College, where he did his senior thesis on Drive-By Truckers. He has written for Rolling Stone and Time Out New York. He and his wife met on a White Stripes message board.

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