Review
Life in the age of the BlackBerry and TiVo is busy, and the New Pornographers know it. For people who don’t have the time to download every ’70s A.M. radio hit, frontman A.C. Newman does it for you, functioning as a rock history search engine, splicing the best parts of pop’s greatest hits into perfectly formed blasts of bliss, shamelessly aiming for melodic intricacy that soundtracks your day with the same joyous refrain.
This is the Vancouver band’s third album of multi-hook, keyboard-pumping pop pleasure. On 2000’s Mass Romantic and 2003’s Electric Version, the lyrics avoided romance, alluding cryptically to, say, the thrill of radio waves, the raw excitement of blown speakers and streaming magnets. Jumping like a curious mind on the trail of a hot discovery, their songs turned synaptic flares into singalongs, with melodies usually set in motion by the two male songwriters, then borne aloft by the mezzo-soprano blare of co-lead singer Neko Case.
This time though, Newman takes his foot off the accelerator a little. And it’s Twin Cinema’s relative melancholy that makes it the band’s best album yet. The title track bounces with giddy delight, but after that the album takes a meditative detour. Imagistic lyrics lament the difficulty of hanging on to youthful excitement, while still hoping it can be done. On “The Bones of an Idol,” when Case follows an admission of lost inspiration with the optimistic reversal, “But something keeps turning us on,” she’s quickly rewarded by a happy sunburst of guitar swirl. This zest for creative survival also drives the fist-pumping “Use It,” in which Newman buzzes on communal connection, “Two sips from the cup of human kindness and I’m shit-faced.”
Their pogo exuberance is still intact, but now they use it to find the best passage through hipster middle age. They move way too quickly to ever be emo. But as they sing on “The Bleeding Heart Show,” the chanting tour-de-force, the New Pornographers have “taken magic to a primitive new place.”
DOWNLOAD: “The Bleeding Heart Show,” “Use It,” “These Are the Fables”
This is the Vancouver band’s third album of multi-hook, keyboard-pumping pop pleasure. On 2000’s Mass Romantic and 2003’s Electric Version, the lyrics avoided romance, alluding cryptically to, say, the thrill of radio waves, the raw excitement of blown speakers and streaming magnets. Jumping like a curious mind on the trail of a hot discovery, their songs turned synaptic flares into singalongs, with melodies usually set in motion by the two male songwriters, then borne aloft by the mezzo-soprano blare of co-lead singer Neko Case.
This time though, Newman takes his foot off the accelerator a little. And it’s Twin Cinema’s relative melancholy that makes it the band’s best album yet. The title track bounces with giddy delight, but after that the album takes a meditative detour. Imagistic lyrics lament the difficulty of hanging on to youthful excitement, while still hoping it can be done. On “The Bones of an Idol,” when Case follows an admission of lost inspiration with the optimistic reversal, “But something keeps turning us on,” she’s quickly rewarded by a happy sunburst of guitar swirl. This zest for creative survival also drives the fist-pumping “Use It,” in which Newman buzzes on communal connection, “Two sips from the cup of human kindness and I’m shit-faced.”
Their pogo exuberance is still intact, but now they use it to find the best passage through hipster middle age. They move way too quickly to ever be emo. But as they sing on “The Bleeding Heart Show,” the chanting tour-de-force, the New Pornographers have “taken magic to a primitive new place.”
DOWNLOAD: “The Bleeding Heart Show,” “Use It,” “These Are the Fables”
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