new New Pornographers

Thus we see the diminishing returns of power-pop. I don't how different you guys expect a NP album to be. All power-pop gets tiresome when it doesn't slow down and congeal (no snark intended).

i would have gladly settled for more of the same--this record just seems super-conventional and horns/strings/acoustic guitars is feeling like a death sentence for this band.

Newman sez the next record will be minimal techno, no worries 4 u

next is the new pornographers/coldplay collab.

I'm in the (small) camp that wasn't disappointed with Challengers. I actually thought that album showed some growth for the band. It wasn't all sugar. I usually put the first three albums on shuffle but I like listening to Challengers on its own. This album on the other hand... it's not bad, but I'm feeling pretty ambivalent about it.

challengers was awesome outside of 2 or 3 songs

yeah i liked Challengers fine. def. a more listenable album as a whole -- i love the first two, but it's rare that I make it the whole way through those. The catchiness/energy can be kind of exhausting. Maybe I'm just old.

We're all old.

one day i was all young and now look at me.

What's weird is, given its rockist inclinations, you'd think power-pop would appeal *more* to (relatively) old people like me. But no. Alfred sums up my feelings about this band. It's something about power-pop: after two or so albums per band it gets pretty tiresome, and not always for a good - or easy to encapsulate - reason. Doesn't matter if it's the Pernice Brothers or New Pornos or what ... eventually it all seems so beholden to the clever chord progressions and arrangements or, if not, sunk by a conscious change of direction. Sort of like the three album curse that used to haunt hip-hop.

I'm in the (small) camp that wasn't disappointed with Challengers. I actually thought that album showed some growth for the band. It wasn't all sugar. I usually put the first three albums on shuffle but I like listening to Challengers on its own.

― scott pgwp (pgwp), Friday, May 7, 2010 11:50 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

Yep. I like this, though.

Hey--I read ILM often, but I almost never post. The Challengers talk has compelled me to take to the keyboard now, this one time, because I feel strongly about the subject. Regulars, I hope that's all right!

I absolutely *love* Challengers, with all four chambers of my heart, and really was surprised and disappointed when I learned that so many people had received it so poorly or (maybe worse) so indifferently. I've wondered often how the album got its reputation for boring monotony, which to me seems perfectly at odds with its content. I've wondered whether some listeners heard something different in their first spin from what they expected, and in their disappointment in what was absent turned their ears off without hearing what *was* on the album. The Pitchfork hatchet-job review, which (normative disagreement aside) I thought was one of the laziest and worst pieces of writing I've ever seen on Pitchfork, probably caused a lot of people to give it a pass.

I think that's a real shame, because Challengers opens up to the patient listener like few other records I have heard. It's filled with genuine feeling and tenderness. Carl Newman hides some of the feeling behind lyrical screens, but a handful of plays will carry you through the screens. The title track and "Go Places" are love songs written for grown-up people, which is something you can't say about too many love songs. "Myriad Harbour" is something different, a fantastic soundtrack for walking around New York City looking at pretty girls. (I've field-tested it.) "Adventures in Solitude" was my favorite song of 2007 and one of my favorites of the past 5 or 10 years. The part at 2:27 when Kathryn Calder takes lead is like the sun coming out. I must have listened to that song a hundred times during the summer when Challengers came out. It's completely romantic without being at all sentimental. The entire album builds to that moment when Kathryn takes lead.

Have you read Jane Austen's novel Mansfield Park? There are two main female characters, one a wild funny charming worldly and maybe dangerous girl named Mary Crawford who can make every man she meets fall in love with her, the other a quiet frightened tenaciously faithful English rose named Fanny Price whose beauty, though finally as bewitching as Mary's, only reveals itself with time and attention. Fanny is the heroine, but you can easily put the book down having sympathized more with her Mary, her rival. I think that in making Challengers Carl Newman found a vocal difference between Neko Case and Kathryn Calder which resembles the Mary-Fanny Mansfield dynamic and adds a valuable dramatic component to the songs on Challengers as they flow from one to the next. Neko is obviously Mary Crawford, and Kathryn is Fanny Price. Neko sounds like a bombshell, even when she sings softly: in her tender songs ("Challengers," "Go Places") her voice has a quality which says, "I have seen the world and many of the people in it, and I have no illusions about it anymore, and I have come back to you." Kathryn's voice carries a certain youthful bashfulness which is also very appealing, just different, and suited for different songs. Carl recognized this and divided the singing parts on Challengers between his two women in a way that to my ears sounds flawless.

Perfect example of what I mean: In "Unguided," toward the end of the song, though Carl sings almost all of it, there's one line written for a woman: "And why wait for the weakened state/To lie next to the weaker sex?" Carl gave an interview shortly after the album came out saying that Kathryn, his niece, really was embarrassed to sing this line and didn't want to do it, but finally he asked her so much that she relented. He said that he felt that only she could get it just right, and he was correct. Kathryn sings it with extraordinary shyness and vulnerability, and the whole effect is pretty intoxicating for those guys among us, like me, who have a tendency to fall in love when a girl singer really hits it home. Neko, great talent that she is, couldn't have done it so well.

I recognize that my ears and heart may be wired weirdly, and may be responding to something that just doesn't reach most human beings--i.e., maybe I'm a dog and Challengers is my dog whistle. But I encourage those of you who like the New Pornographers but who backed away from Challengers to try it once more. At least try the four songs "Challengers," "Myriad Harbour," "Go Places," and "Adventures in Solitude." You might hear more this time.

Nice. For that, I will give it a try.

Mansfield Park = Austen's Heaven Tonight?

Excellent stuff, Bill. Absolutely OTM about "Adventures in Solitude" - I was wondering when I'd come across someone who shares my intense love for that song. OTM too about the rubbishness of the Pitchfork review - notwithstanding its ignorance of the album's best song, it seemed to take the view that down-paced = bad, something you'd expect from the NME in its worst excesses. God forbid that such dreck would put people off listening to the album. That being said, I do think the album does sag in parts and some of the songs represent good intentions that do not quite come off, but still, I probably listened to it more than most things that came out in '07. For the first three tracks and AIS, and other scattered moments of loveliness, it is most certainly a keeper.

On the whole, good to have some passion and enthusiasm amidst the generally stultifying and ennui-inducing nature of many of the posts on this thread.

I'm on the same page as Bill. I thought Challengers was tremendous, and prob my second fave NP album after Electric Version.

For me they peaked with Twin Cinema (love the drum sound).

Challengers opens up to the patient listener like few other records I have heard. It's filled with genuine feeling and tenderness.

agreed. see, e.g., failsafe.

that's a great post, bill.

drum sound was great on twin cinema, but it's nearly as good in stretches of together.

The tom work in "Your Hands (Together)" enacts in me automatic responses. I am just suddenly playing air drums, world be damned.

I love "All the Old Showstoppers," personally. I love the idea of being a theatrical troupe -- like a broadway show, or more tapping into like this Annie Get Your Gun'esque Wild West / Buffalo Bill theatricality where they trot out the old showstoppers, and even today, you can be a band with the big numbers (esp with New Pornographers who have a def, recognizable almost mythological sound) and begin playing the old familiar chords and your audience is there to be blown away, and as the audience "you are nothing if not home." But see, Gaslight Anthem's "Stay Lucky" too for an example of how much of a sucker I am for bands mythologizing their force and institutions.

Not sure how much of this one I'm sold on yet, but this thread has made me go back and reconsider both Challengers (vv underrated) and Twin Cinema (a couple of towering tracks and a couple of good ones but a fair amount of relative meh).

Also rediscovering Bejar's "gift" for supremely irritating melodies. This fuckin' guy. I'd rate Challengers at least equal to Twin Cinema if they'd remove "Myriad Harbour"...

Christ, man, "Myriad Harbor" is the best song on Challengers.

But I guess it's okay if you think the opposite! I don't know, I have trouble understanding Bejar-hate.

Dan Bejar plays the Davy Jones role in a New Pornographers/Monkees comparison. He even kind of sounds like him at times. But anyway, Davy was probably the most divisive Monkee like Bejar is the most divisive 'Nog.

I halfway understand why people like Dan Bejar and his songs, but I'll never cross over to that camp willingly.

I've never disliked a Bejar penned NP song, even tho I have no interest in Destroyer.

Tho maybe I should check out a Destroyer track or two. Now that I think about it, I don't know if I've ever actually heard Destroyer.

Thus we see the diminishing returns of power-pop. I don't how different you guys expect a NP album to be. All power-pop gets tiresome when it doesn't slow down and congeal (no snark intended).

I figured that NP were one of the few bands who could break that stigma. It should have gotten tiresome after the first three albums but it didn't -- those albums sounded exactly the same but it was just more and more of a really good thing. That's not to say that I didn't like "Challengers". I haven't heard the new one yet.

Bejar's "gift" for supremely irritating melodies

With supremely irritating vocals to match.

I don't know, I have trouble understanding Bejar-hate

It's mostly in good fun. It wouldn't be NPs without him. But I really do find "Myriad Harbour" excruciating.

myriad harbor is great--entering white cecelia is the bejar dud on challengers.

fwiw i think adventures in solitude is a miss from an arrangement perspective but beyond that minor ish bill h. basically otm

Am convinced that Bejar is the least! convincing! vocalist! evah! and very strongly feel that he's phoning it in on Together; after only a couple spins I can't listen to even a few bars of any of his songs on this album. His hooks are like he's trying to be the Gaslight Anthem or something... on the other hand when he's being as genuinely himself (i.e. archly arty) as he ever gets on Newps albums, I don't hate the result. "Myriad Harbour" is one of the best tracks on Challengers and things like "Jackie Dressed in Cobras" provided a good foil for Newman's huge hooky numbers. Here I feel like every time he shows up he's like the guy who bluffs his way into the room at a party, takes over the conversation, makes unwarranted belligerent/asinine statements, then leaves to send another roomful of people into a bummer tailspin.

I love what they're doing with the Case/Calder backing vocals on this album. It sounds like they're using some of the techniques the Dirty Projectors lean on with the female vox and putting them into the service of pop. Kurt Dahle on drums makes such a difference to the energy, too - I feel like that's part of what was missing from Get Guilty.

you feel that way about bejar's if you can't see my mirrors? because it seems to me that song uses the case/calder backing vocals to their best effect -- and that's something i wouldn't normally assume would be the case with a bejar song (tho the vocals between him and case on twin cinema's streets of fire were lovely).

I like all of Bejar's songs on the new one.

Also, I agree w/ the contention that "Adeventures In Solitude" is one of their greats.

yeah, i think bejar hit his stride (in terms of how he fits best with the band) on together.

Uh oh. I like Destroyer's Rubies.

it has kind of an updated bowie-vibe to it, i think. lots of open space, guitar that chime in and out and play space-y lines, and drums that seem like they are tumbling downhill.

great, self-aware, playful, wry lyrics; great summer vibe.

anyway, yeah, i love rubies.

The new NP is not really growing on me, unfortunately.

cast this record into the trash bin, trust me i had my reasons

Is any Canadian album in 2010 safe from ksh's trashbin????

haven't heard this yet, save maybe one song, but i do love Destroyer (at least his last two albums, which are the only ones I've really heard)

cast this record into the trash bin, trust me i had my reasons

I TRUST YOU HAD YOUR REASONS BUT WHY, KSH, WHY?

hahahaha

i have not heard it! i have not bought it! i was merely alluding to the first lines of Destroyer's Rubies!

btw wherever I shake out on this thing (at worst, it's merely another awesome NPs record), let me just go on the record that "Your Hands (Together)" is dope as fuck. love the hypercompressed string noise "solo"

on further reflection he may just be playing behind the bridge. still sounds great though.

i listened to this album on a two-hour plane flight today. the middle and end sections really sounded outstanding. it's funny, because i started by listening to the new disc from the nat'l, and from track nos. 1 -- 6, i thought "wow, i never cared about this band before, but this may be the best thing i've heard this year." then i hit track no. 7, and the album hit a wall for me. by contrast, i began in the middle of together -- maybe at sweet talk, sweet talk -- and concentrated on it through the end (we end up together) and was floored by how well the building orchestration worked, and how the case/calder harmonies gave me chills, and how different and interesting each song was from the next.

Kathryn has a new album imminent for release. This song is intriguing: http://stereogum.com/385921/kathryn-calder-slip-away/mp3s/

The iTunes Bonus Tracks for "Together" make up an EP of three Outrageous Cherry covers, and they are AWESOME!

oh nice. got a 7" of that when i bought the album but have not yet listened.

Just got back from their show. First half was excellent, everyone in fine form and jeez, Blaine's lost weight and I swear I saw him smile a few times! However, 2nd half was bogged by too many late-period Newman trudgers and (predictably) Bejar, who seriously looked like a homeless person who'd accidentally wandered onto stage.