A New Song From The New Pornographers, That Is Also "White" By Okkervil River

Kind of superimposed onto one of our songs, I'll try to explain...

  We toured with Okkervil River in early 2008 and immediately become fast friends. I was initially intimidated by Will Sheff but that only lasted seconds as he is just an immediately friendly kind intelligent person. I couldn’t even begrudge him the way they seemed to be blowing us off the stage. When they were recording their next record, he let me listen to the mixes, asked for my opinion on sequencing and song choices. The record would become ‘I Am Very Far’. This one:

I even got to sing with them on TV. Can’t find it on YouTube but I’m pretty sure it happened. My favorite song from those sessions was a song called ‘White’. I told Will it should be the first song on the record. After that maybe ‘Wake And Be Fine’, then ‘White Shadow Waltz’. He ended up cutting it from the album. Why ask for my opinion, Will, if you’re not going to listen?!?!? It ended up on the next one, ‘The Silver Gymnasium’, so I guess it worked out, but I still felt like the song had been slighted. It was always in the back of my mind through the years, the idea that we should cover it.

    This version that I’ve posted today, the one at the end after the paywall, it started out as an original. Its working title was ‘Get New’, you gotta call it something. This is a very rough snippet of the earliest version of it. THIS IS NOT THE SONG ADVERTISED IN THE HEADLINE! THAT IS AT THE END, AFTER THE PAYWALL! Okay, that feels clear. I am mumbling in that signature falsetto of mine, seeing what happens if I just start singing gibberish with no clear idea of what I’m going to do. It’s what Eno had David Byrne doing during the Remain In Light sessions! There is precedent for this nonsense! I can’t believe I’m posting this but it helps push the story along:

We had a day off in Minneapolis late 2019, so I got the band into a studio there to work on music. We don’t live in the same town anymore so it makes sense to work together when we can. We had a cool vibe going and I’m sure I had some lyrics worked up, it seemed good. A good days work. Rhythm section sounded great, Kathryn laid down all sorts of cool keyboard ideas. Had the building blocks to make a song, make a mix. Now let’s get back to touring.

    The song kicked around for years, I’d occasionally listen to it and work on it, but I couldn’t quite find the sound, the magic pixie dust that brings it all alive. It was the half finished puzzle on the dining room table, the one you leave there for years. That old trope.

    Only recently it struck me that I could layer the Okkervil River song over top of it. Sure, I had to speed the song up, change the key, sing a couple verses in half time, cut out a few words (just a few) but it worked. What did one call that art technique? It’s not “layering”, not that simple. Maybe it’s called layering. What’s important is the fact that it worked! Eureka!

     This brings up some interesting questions though. Do I get any writing credit for this? It was my song until I sang different words and melodies over it. The form of the song standard to the point of public domain. The 1 to the 4 to the 5 to the minor 6th. The baffled king composing hallelujah. 4 beats to a bar, 8, 12, 16 bars. Almost everybody using the same forms. We layered our sounds and melodies and harmonies over those pre-set forms but they didn’t come together until I added Will Sheff’s lyrics and melody. Finally the song worked, but the song wasn’t mine anymore.

     Does that matter? Probably not. No one is getting rich here. Unless something weird happens. I'm happy with the way it came out. This is how the sausage gets made. We all look at each other and ask “Do you know how to make sausage?” and then we remember that we are sausage makers, it’s our job, sausage makers that wake up every morning brand new, having to learn how to do it all over again. You know, like sausage makers do. That old trope.

Here it is: an Okkervil River song called ‘White filtered through the New Pornographers machine….