The Former Site Of

Description

A woman finds herself trapped on a cruise ship. A pastor decides to go down with his town. A man at the florist's gets lost in the meaning of a bouquet. These characters, caught in personal or social crises, are the subjects of ten stories, both current and timeless, gathered as finely crafted pop songs by The New Pornographers on their upcoming album, The Former Site Of. Like *Continue as a Guest*, this album reveals a new lease on life for The New Pornographers, composed of bandleader A.C. Newman, Neko Case, Kathryn Calder, John Collins, and Todd Fancey. They thus enrich their already abundant repertoire in a surprising way. Accompanied by legendary studio drummer Charley Drayton (Divinyls, Keith Richards, Fiona Apple), The New Pornographers achieve unprecedented clarity and richness in their tracks, breathing unique life into the characters whose destinies unfold in Newman's tender and evocative lyrics. *The Former Site Of* enhances the sounds Newman unleashed by building and recording in a home studio, thus refining the band's creative process far beyond the constraints of remote collaboration imposed by the COVID lockdown. One of the most obvious layers is the way a song is built around a featured instrument. On *The Former Site Of*, it's a mandolin which, in Carl Newman's hands, gives the first single "Votive" its soaring acceleration, moving from an atmospheric introduction with synthesizers and keyboards to a classic, expansive jam. "Bonus Mai Tais" speaks, in a sense, of a dying flame. Newman describes meeting a friend with terminal cancer over a drink, shaken by his frankness in the face of death. It's a poignantly sad song, where the anguish of the moment shines through in Newman's voice. It's also one of the band's most beautiful, with Neko Case and Kathryn Calder's harmonies acting as an ethereal mirror to the scene. *The Former Site Of* places many of its subjects on the brink: their time is limited, their situation desperate, but they hold on. *The Former Site Of* is a plea against expectations, delivered by a band that continues to evolve instead of resting on its laurels. Even in its darkest or most self-deprecating moments, the music radiates an irresistible effervescence, an affirmation that the struggle waged by its characters and by the listener, like a photograph of a distant planet, is worth living.