When Canadian indie music underwent its massive creative surge in the early 2000s, the main frontrunners were spread across the country’s three major cities. Arcade Fire led the charge from Montreal, Broken Social Scene bore the flag for Toronto and The New Pornographers sallied forth from Vancouver in the west.

The New Pornographers soon earned the supergroup tag due to the presence of Destroyer’s Dan Bejar, Neko Case, Kurt Dahle of Age of Electric and Limblifter, John Collins of The Evaporators, Todd Fancey, also of Limblifter, and their valiant leader, Allan Carl “AC” Newman. The supergroup label irritated the former frontman of Zumpano initially, until it turned into something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“When we started we really weren’t a supergroup,” says Newman, “because we were all really obscure. But as the years have gone on and people have become more successful on their own, we are a supergroup. I mean, we have Neko Case in our band and her record is number three in the charts in the States. And everybody does well on their own. Destroyer does well and I have my solo records. People can call us whatever they want.” He laughs: “They can call us wankers if it makes them feel better.” In fact, Case’s own popularity has possibly exceeded that of The New Pornographers. Dan Bejar, his bandmate, is now involved in another supergroup, the critically adored Swan Lake with Spencer Krug of Wolf Parade and Carey Mercer of Frog Eyes.

When I speak to Newman, he’s taking a break from an activity that will surely get New Pornographers fans excited. The core element of the band (without Case and Bejar, due to their own outside commitments) is currently rehearsing in Vancouver ahead of beginning work on their fifth record. Before that really kicks off, Newman is hitting the road to get behind his second solo album, Get Guilty, embracing the chance to return to smaller venues with a new band in tow.

“It’s always nice playing little clubs. It’s nice to move into the bigger places too but a rock club that holds two or three hundred people is still the most exciting place to see music. Unfortunately it’s not easy to make a living playing small venues so when you get the chance to move up, you have to take it.” And getting out on the road with a different band has its own benefits too. “It’s people you don’t see all the time,” says Newman. “You’re getting to know them on the road and that makes it more fun. The New Pornographers are all really good friends of mine but we’ve all heard each other’s stories a million times. When you’ve been in a band for ten years, it’s almost like being in prison. ‘Yeah, I’ve heard that joke. You told it to me twenty times before.’”

One thing that is apparent from speaking to Newman, besides the fact that he is funny and good natured, is that he is an eminently practical man. Spending as long as he has in the music industry is bound to knock a lot of the romance out of you, but Newman retains his enthusiasm for it, with an added dollop of practicality and cynicism. The New Pornographers had just returned from touring on the back of Challengers when Newman got stuck into Get Guilty, and he’s wasted little time before heading out on tour again. “I’ve said it many times,” he says, “it’s my job to make music and I’m pretty lucky that that’s what I do so I figured I may as well work at it. I’m not at a point where I can sit back. I don’t have millions of dollars. If I did have millions of dollars then I probably wouldn’t make another record for five years. What do I care? I’m loaded.”

It would be a mistake to interpret Newman’s words as a suggestion that music is solely a commercial commodity to him now. “I feel more drive now to make music than I did fifteen years ago,” he says, “I was never twenty-one years old and totally driven to succeed. I was a twenty-one-year-old slacker. Now I’m at a point where I’m trying to succeed for the first time in my life. It’s a strange feeling.

He got older, got married and bought a house, he explains. “I used to make music for the longest time just for the hell of it and I never expected to make money out of it. It’s strange when this hobby you’ve done all your life suddenly becomes your job. It’s a great thing. I never want to take it for granted so I’m gonna try my best to make a go of it.”

All the above has served to transform the slacker into a hard-working forty-one-year-old success story. But Newman is at odds with the idea of himself as a hard worker. “Whenever I’m talking to people about what I’m doing they’re always like ‘You work so hard. You’re always working on a record or touring.’ That’s so strange because I think of myself as a lazy person. It doesn’t come naturally to me to work very hard. I force myself into that situation. Right now I’m rehearsing but I’d much rather be at my house in Woodstock, just hanging out in the springtime. But I never want to complain about how hard it is to be a musician because I know it’s not that hard. When you’re touring, sometimes you don’t want to be on the road but it’s so easy. Just travelling around and showing up. It might be draining, it might be unhealthy; but it’s still easy. Anytime your job is doing something that you love to do, it’s a privilege.”

With Get Guilty, Newman has headed for rockier terrain, a louder affair than his first solo record The Slow Wonder and far less mellow than Challengers. “On Challengers I got about as mellow as I wanted to get,” he says. “After that I thought I wanted to write more rock songs. Not that this record is that rock but it’s a little more so than Slow Wonder or Challengers. I’m always trying to change it up. It’s too easy to repeat yourself. It’s tricky though. You want to sound like yourselves but you don’t want to sound like yourselves.”

Indeed, it is all too familiar for the music media to damn one band for sticking too close to their last effort and damn another for veering too far away. Newman says he no longer pays attention to those kinds of double standards. “It’s nice when people say nice things but when people have negative things to say, it doesn’t really affect what you do. You’re not going to change your style for them. You’re not going to please everyone. Maybe it’s just getting older. You start to figure things out. Like don’t read your own press.”