new New Pornographers

sweet talk and up in the dark are the only two i was really feeling on the first listen.

i don't get the sense that newman really wants to write for this band anymore--on his solo records he doesn't feel the need to overarrange everything and the compositions on get guilty were way the hell more interesting than anything here

ksh, time to explore other "genres."

like "christian metal" and "crabcore."

also good: viking metal

listened to this last night. sounded good! "if you can't see my mirrors" might be my fave. but this band is pretty consistent for me. i pretty much like it all.

It's a big improvement on Get Guilty - with a few exceptions, the latter sounded fairly tired.

ksh, time to explore other "genres."

― cool and remote like dancing girls (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, May 7, 2010 10:24 AM

yeah -- a good 75% of my purchases are metal records these days

yeah, i wasn't terribly keen on Get Guilty -- something seemed off about that record.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ this, tho i didn't give it much of a chance. somewhere along the way, the notion of an a.c. newman solo record began feeling drab and boring. by constrast, the notion of a new NewPo record still seems exciting and worthwhile.

xxpost

i don't know how i didn't go nuts earlier after just buying indie record after indie rock w/o even paying attention to any other genres for five years

yeah, as far as AC Newman records go, it sort of seems like he should actually try to make something *different* from the NPs ... Maybe that's what he was trying to do with Get Guilty (his 1st solo rec was ace, tho). Just felt like on Get Guilty the songs were a little lackluster and he tried to dress them up with kinda offbeat production. I didn't hate it or anything, but I haven't felt the need to go listen to it again.
i had a theory a while ago that the NPs should shake things up -- Neko should produce the next Pornographers record, Bejar should produce the next Case record and Newman should do the next Destroyer record. i don't know what that would mean, but it sounds kind of cool in my head.

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 don't KNOW how

"All power-pop gets tiresome when it doesn't slow down and congeal (no snark intended)."

This is reductive and kind of meaningless (no snark intended). (I was thinking of adding a winking smiley face there as well, but I thought it would soften the retort to the point of excessive cuddliness.)

Whether it's Cheap Trick, the Raspberries, Matthew Sweet, or whoever else, sooner or later the formula bores me; and when they change the formula it's almost always a failure.

Obviously it's not true of everyone. I have a friend who listens to this shit all day but too much sugar's bad for you.

Well, I would argue the term "power-pop" is fairly hazy to begin with, and almost invariably applying it to a specific artist will seem reductive. Certainly, I think it is with regards to the NPs.

ksh, time to explore other "genres."

The "classic melodic pop" genre is a wonderful as anything else, and is where indie acts tend to end up once they learn the importance of arranging and producing. Nothing negative about that. :)

(Or you might as well call it power pop for that matter, although it is a stupid term, because good power pop doesn't really have all that much "power")

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