NEKO CASE doesn’t play weddings, but tonight she was making an exception. On a recent Saturday the indie-rock superbabe took the stage at Union Hall in Brooklyn and warned a group of guests that the music they were about to hear was highly inappropriate for the occasion.
“But it’s what Carl and Christy wanted,” she said, launching into a fiery set of songs about love gone wrong.
Carl would be A. C. Newman, the groom and frontman for the New Pornographers, the Canadian octet known for its smart-person pop. Dressed in a Ben Sherman suit with a calla lily pinned to his lapel, Mr. Newman, 39, had wrapped his arm around the waist of his brand-new wife, Christy Simpson, 34, a strawberry blonde who is a marketing manager at Matador Records, the band’s longtime label.
Ms. Simpson is also the muse for the New Pornographers’ latest album, “Challengers,” a heart-on-its-sleeve ode that comes out this week. Two years ago, Mr. Newman began an e-mail courtship with Ms. Simpson, and relocated from Vancouver to New York to settle down with her.
The couple had invited the entire Matador staff, along with industry types, for a marathon party that began at 1 p.m. (after a ceremony held at a Unitarian church in Brooklyn Heights) and raged past midnight.
Copiously flowing Champagne functioned as Gatorade, and the absurdist comedian Eugene Mirman served as master of ceremonies. “I’m going to run this like a prison,” he deadpanned. “I’ll be telling you when to eat cake and when to go to the bathroom.”
The comedian David Cross, a guest, made a provocative statement in pants festooned with whales (irony or back from Nantucket?). Mr. Newman provided his own slapstick when he tried to feed the bride a slice of cake he held between two knives, and dropped it.
“The key to any relationship is defeat and acceptance,” Ms. Simpson said from a corner banquette where she was stealing quality time with Mr. Newman and his bandmates Blaine Thurier, John Collins, Dan Bejar and Kathryn Calder. Ms. Simpson added: “It’s like, O.K., let’s just watch ‘Top Chef.’ ”
“That’s love,” piped in her husband of mere hours. “Wanting the same person to win on a reality show.”
During the toast-giving session, Mr. Thurier co-opted a soliloquy from the character Salieri in the film “Amadeus,” about the unwavering note of an oboe being sweetened by a clarinet.
At least one guest was moved by the sentiment. “I cried when Blaine gave his speech,” Ms. Case admitted later at the bar, clutching a Jägermeister.
After a pizza delivery, the party relocated to the hall’s basement, where it grew ever more high-school-party sloppy. The band Mates of State, consisting of the husband-and-wife duo Kori Gardner and Jason Hammel, played a dreamy cover of Gnarls Barkley’s hip-hop confession “Crazy” — a precursor for the karaoke that soon transpired.
Mr. Newman was one of the first to take the mic. “I just got married. I’m doing ‘Against All Odds,’ ” he announced, and succeeded in turning Phil Collins’s maudlin lyrics into an artful anthem.
Ms. Case and Ms. Calder followed with a bouncy rendition of Pink’s hit romp “Get the Party Started.” Not that anyone needed further encouragement.
