In the Morse Code of Brake Lights

The New Pornographers have always had a way of balancing the direct and the oblique—certainly there aren’t a lot of bands out there that could venture the word “metastasize” in a chorus (“You’ll Need a New Backseat Driver”) or play out an extended reference to Ptolemy (“One Kind of Solomon”) and still land in the ballpark of casual conversation, let alone sound like they’re having fun doing it. Stylized, energetic, less synth-centric than 2017’s *Whiteout Conditions* but just as densely packed in arrangement and metaphor, *In the Morse Code of Brake Lights*—the band’s second in a row written primarily by A.C. Newman without Destroyer’s Dan Bejar—is, well, a New Pornographers album, a feat made more remarkable by the fact that they’ve been putting them out for 20 years. As usual, there’s the sense that the band is rallying against the corroding influence of invisible forces, a volunteer army of idealists holding steady against prevailing winds of corporate takeover, creative surrender, and apathy in general. “Drifting like proper castaways/Didn’t need a war but it’s here I’d say,” Newman sings on the tumbling power pop of “The Surprise Knock.” “So smile big until it’s thrown us clear/We might be on, be on to something here.” Whether Newman is right or wrong is beside the point—the victory lies in sheer persistence. And Neko Case can still sing to rip your roof off and make you like it (“Colossus of Rhodes”).

Though a sense of doom lurks at the heart of the venerable band’s eighth album, they remain determined to keep classic guitar-pop alive by slyly twisting and expanding the form.

On “In the Morse Code of Brake Lights,” the Canadian-American supergroup stares down societal collapse with dazzling multi-part harmony.

A.C. Newman has never been known as a songwriter with a clear and easily defined message; as the idea man behind the New Pornographers, he enjoys creating grand-scale pop constructs with lyrics that are artfully oblique.

In the past half-decade, the New Pornographers have enjoyed a return to form. Surprisingly, bandleader Carl Newman has achieved this by movi...

Some bands work steadily, churning out records; others leave long gaps, creating a buzz when new music eventually arrives. It’s a testament to the high quality of The New Pornographers that each release feels like the latter despite a bulging back catal

The album is, at least by the group’s typical power-pop standards, a heavier, murkier affair.

According to A. Newman, the New Pornographers latest release, In the Morse Code of Brake Lights, was not intended to be a concept album

In The Morse Code Of Break Lights by The New Pornographers, album review by Adam Fink. The full-length is out today via Concord Music Group

Neko Case substantially contributes to more allusive art-pop. Review by Nick Hasted