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Aug 02, 2019 The New Pornographers By Christopher Roberts

The New Pornographers have announced a new album, In the Morse Code of Brake Lights, and shared its first single, “Falling Down the Stairs of Your Smile.” In the Morse Code of Brake Lights is due out September 27 via the band’s own Collected Work imprint, in partnership with Concord. Check out “Falling Down the Stairs of Your Smile” below, followed by the album’s tracklist and cover art, as well as the band’s upcoming tour dates.

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.”

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

In the Morse Code of Brake Lights Tracklist:

1. You’ll Need a Backseat Driver
2. The Surprise Knock
3. Falling Down the Stairs of Your Smile
4. Colossus of Rhodes
5. Higher Beams
6. Dreamlike and on the Rush
7. You Won’t Need Those Where You’re Going
8. Need Some Giants
9. Opening Ceremony
10. One Kind of Solomon
11. Leather on the Seat

The New Pornographers Tour Dates:

Aug 17 - Toronto, ON - Danforth Music Hall (Danforth 100th Anniversary Show Series)
Sep 19 - Woodstock, NY - Levon Helm Studios
Sep 27 - Madison, WI - Majestic Theatre ^
Sep 28 - Urbana, IL - Pygmalion Music Festival
Sep 29 - Columbia, MO - Roots N Blues N BBQ Festival
Oct 1 - Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue ^
Oct 2 - Chicago, IL - Vic Theatre ^
Oct 3 - Detroit, MI - Majestic Theatre ^
Nov 4 - Boston, MA - Royale ^
Nov 5 - Washington, DC - 9:30 Club ^
Nov 7 - Brooklyn, NY - Brooklyn Steel ^
Nov 8 - Philadelphia, PA - Union Transfer ^
Nov 10 - Saxapahaw, NC - Haw River Ballroom ^
Nov 11 - Asheville, NC - The Orange Peel ^
Nov 12 - Atlanta, GA - Buckhead Theatre ^

^ with Lady Lamb

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