A.C. Newman Get Guilty Posted February 12th, 2009 by Daigle

Picked up this album a couple of weeks ago mostly because I absolutely love The New Pornographers.  Twin Cinema and the somewhat overlooked Challengers were both among the best albums of their respective years.  I think it’s easy to just call those albums, and this one, pop or power pop, and leave it at that.  I think that is a little unfair and not a very apt title for Get Guilty.  While it does have many hook heavy, pop-y elements, it’s not simply pop, but very well crafted, if still upbeat songs.  I think simply classifying it as pop paints this album with too broad a brush, so I’m not going to call it that.  Let’s just call it good.  Full review after the jump.

I fully expected Newman’s second solo effort to be like his New Pornographer songs, just stripped down due to not having the full range of his NP bandmates to back him up and contribute to each tune.  That could not be farther from the truth as Newman has seemingly taken the exact same formula he employs for the New Pornographers and just repeated it for this record.  The organs, fills, guitar, and even vocals are eerily similar to The New Pornographers without having any of the other, uh, Pornographers on the record, but instead using guests from Superchunk and the Mates of State, among others.  The result is surprisingly similar to what you would expect to hear from the New Pornographers – the Newman songs, at least.

In an interest of avoiding a track-by-track breakdown, suffice to say there are many extremely solid tracks on this record.  Newman historically writes some of his best stuff as slower paced songs (see: These Are the Fables, Unguided), and the same is true on this album as well.  The record as a whole never accelerates to a very furious pace, and I honestly think that the portions of this record which seem to make a deliberate attempt to pick up the pace do not succeed the way the rest of the album does.  Songs like There Are Maybe Ten or Twelve, Like a Hitman, Like a Dancer, Thunderbolts and Submarines of Stockholm feel somewhat forced and unnecessarily repetitious and pounding.  I think in trying to find an uptempo groove, the songs get lost in of themselves and never pull out of their setup.  It’s almost as if these songs ended up on the too-harsh side of merely more uptempo and powerful music.  

However, Newman certainly can succeed with some pretty fantastic songs that are nice, catchy, and very well put together.  The album really starts to take off on The Palace at 4 a.m., and stays pretty top-notch for the remainder.   For a large part on Get Guilty, Newman’s songwriting has an exceedingly familiar, nice quality to it.  Put on The Changeling (Get Guilty) and imagine an old television show theme song or something and you can feel the familiarity which comes forth.  In that vein, Newman also has always seemed to lyricize about archetypal themes, and he touches on this sort of thing again on Young Atlantis, one of the best, if quietest, songs on the album.

If AC Newman is the New Pornographers, then this record almost has to be classified as such.  Every NP fan will instantly feel at home in this record and will not be shocked by any of the songwriting and new collaborations that went into producing Get Guilty.  It honestly is essentially a New Pornographers record without all the Pornographers, just maybe not quite as good as the extra talent that New Pornographers bring to Newman in their existing and extremely effective formula.

Daigle Rate: 78

AC Newman - The Changeling (Get Guilty) – From Get Guilty
AC Newman - Young Atlantis - From Get Guilty

AC Newman is currently on tour (again no Dallas dates. Bleah.):

2/20 Vancouver, BC The Biltmore*
2/21 Seattle, WA Neumos*
2/22 Portland, OR Doug Fir Lounge*
2/24 Sacramento, CA Harlow’s*
2/25 San Diego, CA Casbah*
2/26 Los Angeles, CA Troubadour*
2/27 Santa Barbara, CA Club Mercy*
2/28 San Francisco, CA The Independent*
3/1 Eugene, OR John Henry’s*
3/10 Ithaca, NY Castaways*
3/11 Toronto, ON Lee’s Palace*
3/12 Montreal, QC Il Motore*
3/13 Providence, RI Club Hell*
3/14 Boston, MA Paradise*
3/15 New York, NY Bowery Ballroom*
3/17 Philadelphia, PA Johnny Brenda’s**
3/18 Washington, DC Black Cat **
3/19 Chapel Hill, NC Cat’s Cradle**
3/20 Atlanta, GA The Earl**
3/21 Nashville, TN Mercy Lounge**
3/22 St. Louis, MO Blueberry Hill**
3/24 Minneapolis, MN 400 Bar**
3/25 Chicago, IL Logan Square Auditorium**
3/26 Pontiac, MI The Pike Room at The Crofoot**
3/27 Cleveland, OH Grog Shop**
3/28 Pittsburgh, PA Andy Warhol Museum**

* with Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele
** with The Broken West

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