The New Pornographers: The Former Site Of [MERGE]

Why you'll love it

The Former Site Of finds Carl Newman, Neko Case and company in a quieter, more introspective mood, with pedal steel, strings and horns around the harmonies. Metacritic scored it 78, and BrooklynVegan called it the band's best since Brill Bruisers.

About the album

Carl Newman found the title on a road sign in upstate New York, marking the former site of West Hurley, a village flooded to make a reservoir. It's a fitting image for an album about what sits under the surface, and the Vancouver band's tenth record trades some of their trademark power-pop sugar rush for something more muted and searching.

Newman wrote and produced every song, building the frameworks in his home studio before finishing them with the band in studios across British Columbia and the U.S. Neko Case and Kathryn Calder bring the harmonies, John Collins and Todd Fancey fill out the guitars, and Charley Drayton plays drums, joined by Macie Stewart's strings, Paul Rigby's pedal steel and JP Carter's trumpet. "Votive" glows, "Ballad of the Last Payphone" is a sweet hymn to a vanishing thing, and "Bonus Mai Tais," written for a friend facing cancer, is one of the most tender songs Newman has put his name to.

Uncut, Classic Rock and Mojo all came back with warm reviews. It sounds best on a grey afternoon with the kettle on, and in Toronto we're rarely short of those.

Also at Kops: more The New Pornographers on vinyl · browse CDN Pop / Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Merge (cat# MRG879), the 2026 album.