The New Pornographers have announced a new LP titled The Former Site Of. The follow-up to 2023’s Continue as a Guest is slated for release on March 27 through Merge Records. Today’s announcement comes with the release of the piercing, open-hearted jam ‘Votive’, which comes with a video animated by Michael Arthur. Check it out and find the album cover and tracklist below.
Frontperson A.C. Newman began crafting the band’s tenth studio album in his home studio before bringing it to the rest of the band – Kathryn Calder, Neko Case, John Collins, and Todd Fancey. “Having time in my studio really opened things up,” Newman shared in a press release. “I don’t like wasting my bandmates’ time, and always felt guilty when I’d give them a song, ask them to do something, then completely change the song and ask them to do it again. Now I can get the skeleton of a song together first – just a couple of elements, the key feeling, really as little as possible – before bringing it to the band and running from there.”
Last year, the band’s former drummer Joseph Seiders was arrested on child pornography charges and later sentenced to three years in state prison. On the new album, his drum parts were replaced by Charley Drayton (Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan), and Josh Wells (Destroyer, Black Mountain) will join as the touring drummer for their spring tour dates.
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Newman talked about the band’s decision to keep their name, saying:
The day [we found out], we were all like, “Obviously we can’t call ourselves the New Pornographers anymore.” And then time passed. A few weeks later, I ran into my friend Zach Djanikian, who played on this record and Continue as a Guest, and I was talking about the band name possibly changing, and he had the first violent reaction, which was, “No! You can’t change your name. You worked too hard for that name.” And I thought, “Yeah, you’re right.”
The more I thought about it, it just seemed like a bad-faith argument [for changing the name]. I named it after a Japanese movie by Shōhei Imamura [1966’s The Pornographers], so, should we go to the estate of Shōhei Imamura and say, “You should change the name of that movie because there was a band that named themselves after your movie, and this happened”? And from a purely pragmatic point of view, if we changed our name, people would go, “Who is this new band? Oh, it’s the New Pornographers, they changed their name. Why did they change their name? Because of this.” Or, we were gonna change the spelling of the name. “Well, why did they change the spelling of the name? Because of this.” It seemed to me, if you don’t want to talk about it, the best thing you could do was just continue with our name. I’m sure I’m going to be saying this 50 times in the next year.
Revisit our 2023 inspirations interview with the New Pornographers.
The Former Site Of Cover Artwork:
The Former Site Of Tracklist:
1. Great Princess Story
2. Pure Sticker Shock
3. Ballad Of The Last Payphone
4. Spooky Action
5. Wish You Could See Me I’m Killing It
6. Votive
7. The Wine Remembers The Water
8. Calligraphy
9. Bonus Mai Tais
10. The Former Site Of
