kleph
07-04-2007, 02:40 AM
The legacy of Canadian bands through the 1980s was not very good to put it mildly. The cachet of such monumental artists like Leonard Coehn was rapidly eroded by the sheer suckitude of bands like Loverboy, Frozen Ghost and Honeymoon Suite. When you add in the sufferng we endured by the commercial radio stranglehold embrace of soul killingly tepid acts such as Bryan Adams and Alanis Morrisette… lets just say it wasn’t very pretty.
Well, I guess you had to mark it up to the karmic scales evening out for the largess of comedians that came out of the great white north during that same period.
So what the hell happened in the last 20 years? Suddenly there is nothing less than an explosion of kick-ass great bands pouring out of the frozen hinterlands and god bless them for it.
Arcade Fire popped up with the exquisite Funeral only to be followed by The Constantines and The Unicorns shortly thereafter. Being in south America I missed out on a lot of these guys when they first showed up on the radar but Misterbish too the time to fill me in on the pertinent details.
And somewhere in that mess was the dubiously named New Pornographers. Nothing special there but I found that whenever one of their songs played on my iPod my interest was piqued enough to check out who they were. That was two cuts in particular from the band’s 2005 release Twin Cinema – “Use It” and “Star Bodies.”
So I went off and dug up the previous effort, 2003’s The Electric Version and, whoo daddy I got a bit more than I was prepared for and thank goodness for that. This is the kind of record that earns one-word descriptors from the austere Trouser Press, in this case “Amazing.”
The new pornographers provide a rambling glorious cacophony that sings a joyful noise. As they proclaim in one song, it comes out magical… out of blown speakers (because you’ll be sorely tempted to play this baby loud as humanly possible).
These guys seem to be picking up the blueprint left on the studio when the astonishingly innovative Map of the World (http://www.kleph.com/blog.php?v_blog_id=1&v_blog_entry_id=18) were well and truly screwed over by their record label. A clamor of melody and guitar strings that spin wildly across the soundscape but never into the worlds of anarchy and excess. Every digression and hook is somehow absolutely perfect. It’s as much an exercise of musical control as a testament to what having six talented musicians flailing away in unison.
This is a kind of pop pioneered by bands like Big Star and very very early Roxy Music then advanced by folks like ELO when they were hitting all cylinders like with “Mr. Blue Sky.” Toss in a Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs keyboard, a liberal dose of Beach Boy’s style harmonies and maybe a Robyn Hitchcock guitar riff now and then and you get something that is much much more than the sum of the parts a dedicated pop music historian can come up with following a useless dissection.
Perhaps the one that gets me hits me closest to my ever-loving alternative music heart is "The Laws Have Changed." Which is what Map of the World would have sung if they did a version of The Pony. When The New Pornographer's chanteuse Neko Case belts out the chorus above a warbling wha wha guitar it sends goose bumps ups racing up my arms.
Pretty awesome till you get to to “All for Swinging You Around” which takes that same idea and ups the stakes tenfold. Except every time Case sings the title in the chorus I fall in love a little bit more. I haven’t been this smitten with a singer since Syd Straw belted out her best for The Golden Palominos and it’s probably no accident both have proud alt-country roots.
"New Face of Zero" and One serves up meaty chunks of guitar worthy of some 70s dinosaur rock act but that’s just the appetizer. They quickly give ya an entrée of swinging pop awesomeness. The Electric Version starts with a reverb drenched guitar with an inertia of rhythm that would make James Brown proud.
Case in point, "It’s Only Divine Right” a great song with a ton of sing-along harmonies that raise and crash around you while a “96 Tears” keyboard pushes the whole glorious mess forward at a breakneck pace through out the more than four minutes of fantastic fun. What’s he singing about anyway? Who cares? Sounds great and I’m listening to it again.
But this is just a shorthand explanation of these songs that barely do them any sort of justice. Each and every cut on this The Electric Version sports layers upon layers of sound to fall into. And the quasi-nonsensical lyrics surface up through every seemingly effortless hook and haunt you for days after. Be prepared to find yourself singing them randomly in public and collecting quizzical looks from those around you. Ignore it though. It’s awesome to hear music that just makes you happy.
Let’s just say I dig these guys a lot. So does my year-and-a-half old niece. She hears these guys and spins around the room until she falls down laughing. And when nobody’s watching, I do too.
© 2007 C.J. Schexnayder
Ths essay also appears on my website klephblog (http://www.kleph.com/blog.php?v_blog_id=1).
Well, I guess you had to mark it up to the karmic scales evening out for the largess of comedians that came out of the great white north during that same period.
So what the hell happened in the last 20 years? Suddenly there is nothing less than an explosion of kick-ass great bands pouring out of the frozen hinterlands and god bless them for it.
Arcade Fire popped up with the exquisite Funeral only to be followed by The Constantines and The Unicorns shortly thereafter. Being in south America I missed out on a lot of these guys when they first showed up on the radar but Misterbish too the time to fill me in on the pertinent details.
And somewhere in that mess was the dubiously named New Pornographers. Nothing special there but I found that whenever one of their songs played on my iPod my interest was piqued enough to check out who they were. That was two cuts in particular from the band’s 2005 release Twin Cinema – “Use It” and “Star Bodies.”
So I went off and dug up the previous effort, 2003’s The Electric Version and, whoo daddy I got a bit more than I was prepared for and thank goodness for that. This is the kind of record that earns one-word descriptors from the austere Trouser Press, in this case “Amazing.”
The new pornographers provide a rambling glorious cacophony that sings a joyful noise. As they proclaim in one song, it comes out magical… out of blown speakers (because you’ll be sorely tempted to play this baby loud as humanly possible).
These guys seem to be picking up the blueprint left on the studio when the astonishingly innovative Map of the World (http://www.kleph.com/blog.php?v_blog_id=1&v_blog_entry_id=18) were well and truly screwed over by their record label. A clamor of melody and guitar strings that spin wildly across the soundscape but never into the worlds of anarchy and excess. Every digression and hook is somehow absolutely perfect. It’s as much an exercise of musical control as a testament to what having six talented musicians flailing away in unison.
This is a kind of pop pioneered by bands like Big Star and very very early Roxy Music then advanced by folks like ELO when they were hitting all cylinders like with “Mr. Blue Sky.” Toss in a Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs keyboard, a liberal dose of Beach Boy’s style harmonies and maybe a Robyn Hitchcock guitar riff now and then and you get something that is much much more than the sum of the parts a dedicated pop music historian can come up with following a useless dissection.
Perhaps the one that gets me hits me closest to my ever-loving alternative music heart is "The Laws Have Changed." Which is what Map of the World would have sung if they did a version of The Pony. When The New Pornographer's chanteuse Neko Case belts out the chorus above a warbling wha wha guitar it sends goose bumps ups racing up my arms.
Pretty awesome till you get to to “All for Swinging You Around” which takes that same idea and ups the stakes tenfold. Except every time Case sings the title in the chorus I fall in love a little bit more. I haven’t been this smitten with a singer since Syd Straw belted out her best for The Golden Palominos and it’s probably no accident both have proud alt-country roots.
"New Face of Zero" and One serves up meaty chunks of guitar worthy of some 70s dinosaur rock act but that’s just the appetizer. They quickly give ya an entrée of swinging pop awesomeness. The Electric Version starts with a reverb drenched guitar with an inertia of rhythm that would make James Brown proud.
Case in point, "It’s Only Divine Right” a great song with a ton of sing-along harmonies that raise and crash around you while a “96 Tears” keyboard pushes the whole glorious mess forward at a breakneck pace through out the more than four minutes of fantastic fun. What’s he singing about anyway? Who cares? Sounds great and I’m listening to it again.
But this is just a shorthand explanation of these songs that barely do them any sort of justice. Each and every cut on this The Electric Version sports layers upon layers of sound to fall into. And the quasi-nonsensical lyrics surface up through every seemingly effortless hook and haunt you for days after. Be prepared to find yourself singing them randomly in public and collecting quizzical looks from those around you. Ignore it though. It’s awesome to hear music that just makes you happy.
Let’s just say I dig these guys a lot. So does my year-and-a-half old niece. She hears these guys and spins around the room until she falls down laughing. And when nobody’s watching, I do too.
© 2007 C.J. Schexnayder
Ths essay also appears on my website klephblog (http://www.kleph.com/blog.php?v_blog_id=1).