A.C. Newman
New Pornographers leader A.C. Newman released his second solo album, Get Guilty, last week. One its best tracks is "Submarines of Stockholm" (below), a power-pop number about a disorenting trip to Sweden. He explains:
More A.C. Newman on SPIN.com:
>> Review: Get Guilty (Matador)
>> Antony and the Johnsons, A.C. Newman, No Age Play Noise Pop
>> The New Pornographers, Challengers (Matador)
"When the New Pornographers were touring [behind 2007's Challengers], I woke up on the bus in Stockholm. It was very disorienting because we were parked on the end of a pier," Newman tells SPIN.com of the song's inspiration. "So when I looked up from the bus, it just seemed like, 'Why am I surrounded by water?' I couldn't see land, like we were floating on water. Sometimes there are weird moments in your life where your head takes a snapshot for some reason, and you can't shake them. That morphed into 'Submarines of Stockholm.'"
The song's most memorable lyric -- "Few have the luxury of B-sides / I've got buckets full" -- is an different story entirely: "It's the whole idea of being able to compartmentalize your life in a way that you can't in real life," Newman says. "If you're making a record or a song and you screwed it up, you can make it a B-side. It's trickier to do that with the events of your life."
Listen: A.C. Newman, "Submarines of Stockholm"
