If you haven’t been keeping up with the New Pornographers for the past few years, then The Former Site Of—the group’s 10th and latest LP—might come as a bit of a surprise. Gone is the ebullient, effervescent indie-pop collective turning every refrain into an anthemic sing-along, accelerating every rhythm an extra 20 bpm and generally coming across like the epitome of a rousing and uplifting rock and roll band. In its place, as with much of the world, is something more downbeat, more melancholy, more pained at the effort needed to maintain optimism in the face of encroaching darkness. If you’re looking for the latest power-pop sugar-rush of a “The Laws Have Changed” or “The Bleeding Heart Show,” move along. This is the former site of such energy.
Hints of the band’s second act began appearing in the more subdued, meandering melodies of 2019’s In The Morse Code Of Brake Lights, the first release to be solely written by singer-guitarist A.C. Newman. But the new incarnation of the band really took shape post-pandemic, as 2023’s Continue As A Guest began a new process of songwriting, spurred largely by lockdown isolation. Newman found himself alone in his studio, tinkering with parts, honing the driving elements of the song before sending them out to his bandmates to lay down their respective parts. He discovered a new way of working, which has fully transformed not just the band’s artistic process (“Now I can get the skeleton of a song together first,” he says, “before bringing it to the band and running from there”), but profoundly shifted the tone and tenor of the music. It was the first New Pornographers album to feel like its pleasures weren’t immediately apparent, but rather had to be sat with awhile before they revealed themselves.
And if Continue As A Guest was the beginning of a more muted, refined sound, The Former Site Of is steeped in it. This is a record with no worries about aggressive hooks or triumphant singalongs. Newman’s songwriting has become ruminative, reflective, with far more emphasis on creating a mood than perfecting yet another verse-chorus-verse banger. (There’s nary a Neko Case standalone vocal track, even, which used to be a hallmark of their releases.) Were it not for the signature elements of his writing—the bold harmonies, his distinctive voice, the vocal arrangements that start at the end of one measure and end at the beginning of the next—you could be forgiven for thinking this was a wholly different band. In place of all the joy and rambunctiousness, we’ve got existential fears, meditations on the precarity of life, and non-stop anxiety about death, decay, and social collapse. Are we having fun yet?
If all this makes the record sound like a bit of a buzzkill, that’s because it is, though not in a bad way. The Former Site Of is all too aware of what most of us are feeling like these days, and rather than acting as a distraction or rebuttal to the state of the world, it invites us to look straight at it—or rather, askance at it via the music, like the sonic equivalent of a George Saunders story. It attempts to find the beauty in the darkness, the solace in the sadness, and the reasons for hope amid the evidence for despair. “Gotta keep those spirits up / while we’re all waiting to be saved,” Newman sings on album opener “Great Princess Story,” and by album’s end, if he hasn’t necessarily raised your spirits, he’s done a pretty thorough job of reflecting them back to us in a way that reassures the listener: Hey, don’t forget, you’re not alone in this.
Musically, the downbeat mood begins from the jump, with the aforementioned track using mandolin and minor-key harmonizing to tell the story of a passenger stuck on a cruise ship. This is not a happy song, though it has lyrical bite: “Well, at least the drinks are free, as free as a trap can be.” (Each of the ten tracks is purportedly a character study of a different fictional individual in unstable circumstances, though you could be forgiven for assuming they’re all just variations on a lyrical theme: A sane person staring down the current state of the world.) It also introduces a recurring musical theme: the rhythm section thumping in syncopated, stutter-stop time, forsaking the group’s usual four-on-the-floor driving grooves in favor of a sparser feel, almost like Peter Gabriel at his most restrained.
From there, the melancholy mood continues. “Pure Sticker Shock” is driven along a simple, stately rhythm by synth arpeggiations, a muted bass thump, and vocals dominating it all. Yet it sounds almost dazed as Newman delivers thoughts like, “You say I look happy, and I start to laugh.” And the elegiac tone of “Ballad Of The Last Payphone” and “Wine Remembers The Water” reaches its apogee in penultimate number, “Bonus Mai Tais.” The playful name hides a stab of dagger-like grief, as the narrator recounts an evening with a beloved friend who, by the sound of it, is slowly dying. The tune offers a painfully recognizable balance of happiness mixed with fear and sadness at the thought of this being the last time they’ll be together, giving Newman a chance to deliver some of his loveliest imagery (“the sidereal doo-wop of the rain”) alongside the prosaically painful, like the other person buying a new TV because they likely won’t have to pay it off, or even the two sharing the easy appreciation of a beloved pop hit (“Thompson Twins, they rarely missed.”) It’s dark, but it hits home effectively.
Even when changes come, the New Pornographers don’t step far afield. Lead single “Votive” again deploys the mandolin to song-defining effect, leading (for the first time on the album) into a speedier tempo, spurred by a frantic keyboard line; but lyrically, the bleakness remains central: “I’m just trying to keep the lights on…or has it already gone out?” Even with a churning rhythm section picking things up halfway through, the sense of desperation rises in tandem—the closest it comes to a classic New Pornographers tune, but shot through with the omnipresent mournful vibe. “Spooky Action” and “Calligraphy” deliver some dominant guitar strumming and a shuffling, almost R&B groove, respectively, while simultaneously delivering a push-pull between anxiety and rueful, almost gallows-humor hope, the latter practically offering up a jaunty musical counterpoint to the nihilism of the words: “God knows it’s Armageddon somewhere.”
Amid the varying degrees of rueful reflection and worry, two tracks stand out. “Wish You Could See Me I’m Killing It” takes best-title honors while being even sparser than its bedfellows, a plaintive few descending notes atop a minimalist heartbeat rhythm while Newman reflects that “no one’s keeping score out in a graveyard.” And album closer, the title track, does its level best to offer some transcendence amongst the tragedy. With the imagery of an ex-priest, sitting on the roof of his church as flood waters rise, the singer pauses to reflect on everything that’s come before—“Was I a good captain, as the vessel went down?”—before the song erupts into a triumphant, soaring glissando. It’s as though the band is trying to rise above all that’s come before, and then providing a cathartic howl of hope. The old New Pornographers may not live here any more, but they’re hoping to find something better in parts unknown. [Merge]
Alex McLevy is a critic based in Chicago. His writing has appeared in numerous publications including The A.V. Club, The Nation, Punk Planet, and more.
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