The New Pornographers new album, “In the Morse Code of Brake Lights”, sharing its first single, “Falling Down the Stairs of Your Smile.” In the Morse Code of Brake Lights released September 27th via the band’s own Collected Work imprint, in partnership with Concord.
The band’s last album was 2017’s Whiteout Conditions, also released on Collected Works/Concord. In a press release the band’s frontperson and songwriter Carl Newman (who also produced the album) says In the Morse Code of Brake Lights is an accidental concept record.
“I was about two-thirds of the way through the record when I began to notice that lyrically so much of it was pointing toward car songs,” he says. “The opening track is ‘You’ll Need a Backseat Driver,’ and that was a metaphor that seemed to be running through other songs, too. Next to the love song, I feel like the car song is one of the most iconic kinds of songs in pop music, from Chuck Berry to the present. There was so much of that throughout it that I started thinking: ‘Oh, no, there’s too many references to cars on this record!’ And then I thought, ‘No, that’s good-people might think it’s a concept album.'”
Of “Falling Down the Stairs of Your Smile” Newman had this to say in the press release: “There are so many songs like ‘the something of love’-you know, there’s ‘The Book of Love,’ ‘The Freeway of Love’…Then I thought of ‘falling down the stairs of your love,’ and I thought, that kind of works. I think it has that element of how do you deal with the ideas of love and happiness in this world right now? When current events are stressful, that makes a stress on people’s relationships, and you’re trying to figure out how to be happy in this loving relationship in this world that seems ugly at every turn, which is not as easy as it seems. So I like the metaphor of love as something that you fall down.”
Almost 10 years ago, The New Pornographers, the band behind one of the best recorded catalogs of the 2000s, released its least enjoyable album, Together. After three near-perfect records out of the gate (2000’s Mass Romantic, 2003’s Electric Version and 2005’s Twin Cinema) and another that’s still really good (2007’s Challengers), the forgettable back half of Together (and a couple clunky arrangements) felt like a potential first step into a downhill slide. So a decade later, The New Pornographers are back on an upward trajectory as the 2010s come to a close. Carl Newman and his motley assemblage of power-pop heroes have not only just released their third straight outstanding album, In the Morse Code of Brake Lights, they’ve continued a killer second act and cemented themselves as one of the great bands of the era. In the Morse Code of Brake Lights is the second consecutive New Pornos album without a handful of songs written and performed by Destroyer’s Dan Bejar, who contributed tunes to each of the band’s first six records. Some will argue his presence is missed—that the band now lacks the variety it once had. That may be true, but the trade-off is worth it: After years of feeling like an experiment, then a hobby (albeit a very productive one) and then a band pulling in a couple different directions, The New Pornographers now have coalesced around Carl Newman and his singular vision. Twenty years into their existence, they seem stronger than ever.
New album ‘In The Morse Code Of Brake Lights’ out September 27th, 2019.
The Fat Angel Sings 