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Jan 09, 2023 By Mark Redfern

The New Pornographers have announced a new album, Continue as a Guest, and shared its first single, “Really Really Light,” via a music video. They have also announced some tour dates, with Wild Pink as support. Continue as a Guest is due out March 31 via Merge, their first for the label. Christian Cerezo directed the video for “Really Really Light,” which features an ice skater not skating on ice. Watch it below, followed by the album’s tracklist and cover art, as well as the tour dates.

Longtime member/contributor Dan Bejar (aka Destroyer) co-wrote “Really Really Light” with frontman Carl “A.C.” Newman. “Part of my process throughout the years has been messing with things I never finished. I really liked Dan’s chorus, and for a while I was just trying to write something that I felt like belonged with it,” Newman says in a press release. “I was thinking of the Aloe Blacc song ‘The Man’ which interpolated the chorus from Elton John’s ‘Your Song’ and thought it would be fun to interpolate a song that no one knows. Not trying to sound like Aloe Blacc, just doing some interpolating of my own. It became a game of writing a verse that felt like a part of the same song. In my mind, I was striving for a little Jeff Lynne–era Tom Petty, a classic go-to.”

The New Pornographer’s last album was 2019’s In the Morse Code of Brake Lights, released via the band’s own Collected Work imprint, in partnership with Concord. After touring for that album finished, Newman began writing the new album at his home in Woodstock, NY. The lineup for this album was Newman, Neko Case, Kathryn Calder, John Collins, Todd Fancey, and Joe Seiders, as well as contributions from saxophonist Zach Djanikian. Sadie Dupuis (Speedy Ortiz, Sad13) co-wrote the song “Firework in the Falling Snow.”

The press release says Continue as a Guest deals with “themes of isolation and collapse, following the ambivalence of day-to-day life during the pandemic and the endless pitfalls of living online” but that the title track “also addresses the continually rolling concerns that come with being in a band for so long.”

“The idea of continuing as a guest felt very apropos to the times,” Newman explains. “Feeling out of place in culture, in society—not feeling like a part of any zeitgeist, but happy to be separate and living your simple life, your long fade-out. Find your own little nowhere, find some space to fall apart, continue as a guest.”

The general onsale for tickets for the tour starts on Friday at 10 a.m. local time, with a presale tomorrow at 10 a.m. local time. The press release points out: “A portion of proceeds from presale tickets sold via the band’s website will be donated to abortion rights organization Frontera Fund.”

Read our 2017 interview with The New Pornographers’ Carl Newman on Whiteout Conditions.

Continue as a Guest Tracklist:

1. Really Really Light
2. Pontius Pilate’s Home Movies
3. Cat and Mouse with the Light
4. Last and Beautiful
5. Continue as a Guest
6. Bottle Episodes
7. Marie and the Undersea
8. Angelcover
9. Firework in the Falling Snow
10. Wish Automatic Suite

The New Pornographers Tour Dates:

April 19—Asheville, NC—Salvage Station*
April 20—Atlanta, GA—Variety Playhouse*
April 21—New Orleans, LA—Tipitina’s*
April 22—Houston, TX—White Oak Music Hall*
April 23—Dallas, TX—Studio at The Factory*
April 25—Austin, TX—Paramount*
April 26—Oklahoma City, OK—Tower Theatre*
April 27—St. Louis, MO—Sheldon Concert Hall*
April 28—Omaha, NE—The Waiting Room*
April 29—Kansas City, MO—The Truman*
April 30—Denver, CO—Gothic Theatre*
May 3—St. Paul, MN—The Fitzgerald*
May 4—Milwaukee, WI—Turner Hall*
May 5—Chicago, IL—Thalia Hall*
May 6—Chicago, IL— Thalia Hall*
May 8—Cincinnati, OH—Memorial Hall*
May 9—Columbus, OH—Newport Music Hall*
May 11—Detroit, MI—El Club*
May 12—Toronto, ON—Danforth*
May 13—Burlington, VT—Higher Ground Ballroom*
May 14—Norwalk, CT— Wall Street Theater*
May 15—Boston, MA—Royale*
May 17—New York, NY—Brooklyn Steel*
May 18—Philadelphia, PA—Union Transfer*
May 19—Washington, DC—9:30 Club*
May 21—Saxapahaw, NC—Haw River Ballroom*

*with Wild Pink

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