The New Pornographers lighten up while sharing life lessons

After a decade and a half fronting the indie rock supergroup the New Pornographers, it should come as no surprise that Carl Newman’s first impression is that of a no-nonsense leader of the pack.

Chew loudly, he warns well before ordering at a Silver Lake restaurant, and he will hate you forever. “I’m serious,” the soft-spoken singer-songwriter says, never breaking eye contact. “I won’t be able to speak to you.”

While his band’s latest album, “Brill Bruisers,” presents the New Pornographers — a group that also includes well-known artists Neko Case and Dan Bejar of Destroyer — at its most effervescent, Newman is most definitely not kidding around.

But Newman isn’t difficult — he’s rather charming, in fact — and he confesses that he’s only recently gotten comfortable with being this direct.

The shift is apparent on “Brill Bruisers,” the New Pornographers’ sixth album. The group’s long, cryptic lyrics have been straightened out, and the themes are thoughtful. There are reflections on aging, lessons from misguided romantic detours and a dogged determination to cheer the left-of-center. It’s all framed against a colorful mix-and-match of guitars, studio trickery and inventive, suddenly danceable pop arrangements. (The eight-piece band, with Case, Bejar and singer-songwriter Kathryn Calder in tow, will headline the Wiltern on Friday.)

Still, despite the occasionally heavy subject matter, the band’s sound is vigorously carefree. Newman, now in his mid-40s, says that’s the result of a relatively new mode of thinking: If he’s going down, he’s going down fighting.

“For years I would think about how I could age gracefully,” Newman says. “Now I think, ‘Screw it.’ It’s going to be ugly. It’s not going to be graceful. I’m not going to go down quietly. I think there’s something noble about that. There’s something quixotic about it.

“Maybe I’m going to lose, but I feel like it’s an important message about death, if for no one else but myself,” he says. “And maybe my son.”

Life lessons abound on “Brill Bruisers.” There’s the never-say-die tale of “Backstairs,” which bursts open with sugary, Abba-like harmonizing, and then there’s “Fantasy Fools,” a rush of a song about living with a fear of the future in which the group’s multi-tiered vocals are treated as an orchestra.

Some of the most effective new tunes, such as “Champions of Red Wine,” take a look back. Sung by Case, whose elegant Americana on her solo efforts can shatter hearts, the song is locked in a battle between melancholy and bitterness. Synths beam, a men’s choir gets chopped into something purely alien and electronic and, lyrically, plenty of bad decisions are made. But don’t get too comfortable: “I’m not your love song,” Case snaps near the end of the tune.

Ask Newman for the story behind a vintage New Pornographers track, such as the hook-filled 2005 song “The Jessica Numbers,” and he’ll shrug and say, “I have no idea.” That’s not the case on “Brill Bruisers,” where Newman says he can track the specific inspiration behind every line.

“The audience doesn’t need to understand the songs, but I hate to be dismissed,” Newman says. “I hate it when people dismiss it as, ‘Oh, what a bunch of gibberish.’

“A lot of ‘Champions of Red Wine’ is about personal experiences I’ve had with just really dysfunctional relationships, like you stay with a person — or keep hooking up with a person — only because it’s simple and it’s easy,” Newman says. “But it’s completely wrong. There’s anger there. Like, ‘A love song is beautiful, and you are not.’”

Yet if one is going to discuss long-lasting relationships, the conversation eventually turns to the members of the New Pornographers themselves. With about half of the group capable of successfully touring with solo projects, the full group’s appearance at the Wiltern is a relatively rare one.

If anything, the New Pornographers are a symbol of perseverance in a pop-culture landscape that values the young and the new.

When considering the group’s sustainability, Newman offers a hypothetical that implies a little distance does a partnership good, even if it forever ensures a cult-sized audience. “If someone said, ‘Here’s the next year of your life, and if you do this, you’ll be massive,’ we’d go, ‘Well, we can’t do that, so we won’t be massive,’” he says. “I’ve said to managers through the years that what you’re offering us is wasted on us. We can’t give you everything you want. If you want Neko to show up and do this at a certain time, we can’t give you that. I don’t think it’s hurt us.

“It’s our weakness and our strength.”

Twitter: @Toddmartens

---------------------------------

New Pornographers

Where: Wiltern, 3790 Wilshire Blvd.

When: Friday

Price: $25-$35, not including surcharges