The New Pornographers Album: “Electric Version”

This is the album that I have most eagerly awaited for the past 2 years. Invariably when such an album has come out, I have been sadly disappointed, not necessary because the album is bad, but because my expectations were way to high. When I first heard "The Laws Have Changed", I didn't know what to think, it sounded as though Neko knew the words to the song before she sang them this time. I thought maybe this one will be too polished like Elvis Costello's "Punch the Clock". But then I heard the rest of the album. While the production is much better than "Mass Romantic", the edge is still there. In many ways the songs sound more urgent than the previous release. Unlike "Romantic" they also slow it down for a couple of songs, and like just about everything else they are successful doing so. My fav on the record "From Blown Speakers" was one where they took it down a notch. Dan Bejar, while no longer a New Pornographer so that he can focus completely on Destroyer, is still at least a FONP (friend of), writes and does lead vocals on three of songs ("Chump Change", "Testament to Youth in Verse", and "Ballad of A Comeback Kid" they make you wish that these guys didn't have so much talent so they would be forced to work together all the time. "Testament" ends with a one word five part harmony that is just amazing. Brian Wilson, Phil Spector be warned a new generation of studio geniuses has arrived.

Not as intense or quirky as their debut, Mass Romantic, Electric Version is a more consistent, fuller sounding, and possibly better version of the New Pornographers. As before, the NPs technique is to use a quadrazillion instruments to layer bouncy rhythm track on top of bouncy rhythm track (the drummer is the closest thing to a lead instrument in this band) beneath insanely catchy melodies (lots of 'em butt-end to butt-end in a subway car) that are wrapped in slightly straining, often sweet, sometimes falsetto harmonies.

What results is something that sounds like simple bubblegum pop from the 60s and 80s....except that it is not simple at all. It's all shimmery brightness on the surface, and dense complexity underneath, with facets that catch the light in different ways. Or maybe it's elegant simplicity on top of blatantly over-the-top production. Whatever! Crazy thing is it works...In Carl Newman's ever busy hands the complexity serves the ebullient feel of the music well, providing a million ways to start and stop momentum, or accent little sections of songs, or just to throw the whole lot into the sea, as at the end of Testament to a Life in Verse when a jaunty call to rebellion against pop mainstreaming is transformed suddenly into a layered, resoundingly beautiful, ringing crescendo of "no, no, no" that could have fallen out of Abbey Road.

The lyrics complicate things further, never quite revealing their explicit meaning while suggesting a combination of satire, dissappointment, and frustration that makes all that musical ebullience sound oddly like a rebel cry. As a result the songs are certainly not simply "sugary goodness," as many have said. Rather they often contain something more akin to angry sarcasm --like on the Laws Have Changed in which Neko wails "Introducing for the first time/ pharoah on the microphone" followed in the next stanza by "Pharoah, all your methods have taught me, is to separate my love from bone." (I don't know exactly what that means, but it feels real wrong.) There's always this tension between the music and the lyrics, between loving this music (as the band clearly does) and questioning the very culture that spawned it and which feeds off it.

So NP concerts are filled with people (me included) screaming madly along with lyrics they barely understand. Carl Newman probably finds this at once funny, and yet oddly perfect. Is pop music really about explicit meaning anyway? Or is it really about feeling and expression? Why should we tell people how to be? Maybe that pop's problem, the problem with all popular culture? Is that why we always get fooled, why we get used so in the end? So many questions...what is there for a sensitive thinking person to do but find release in the the thing itself, the music, with full-throated passion and a wiggle. It's so easy with Newman conducting his manic orchestra and Neko's wail calling you home. That must be the answer.

Or is it? Hmmm...

Well, one thing's certain. Electric Version = Great album.

I could play amateur rock critic here, and talk about how the New Pornographers have outdone themselves yet again, producing a power-pop jewel with perhaps even more facets than their first outing, incorporating new influences (The Police, The Jayhawks) in their canon while keeping hold of their own unique sound.

Instead, I'll just tell a story. I bought this CD on a Thursday, and played it at work a few times that day and the next. On Monday one of my co-workers, who'd never heard the New Pornographers before, came in complaining that she had one of the songs stuck in her head, and she didn't even know what album it was from. By the end of that week, everyone in the room could be heard whistling tunes from the disc even when the stereo was silent. The Electric Version is powerfully addictive, but so far the side effects seem minimal compared with the potency of the high.

From the outerlands comes a superior work that could make stone-faced warriors rid themselves of weapons and pride, and break furiously into an air-guitar romp. Electric Version, by The New Pornographers, is the cd that was sent to Earth to fight off the musical termites that are eating their way into our stereos, and ruining our existence. Honestly speaking, this is the work of musical masterminds whose intellects are slightly tweaked to generate a sound so much their own that it causes pain in my sweet, sweet heart. Once you have heard this cd 1.32 times, something will click and your ears will elongate while your brain slips into some hypnotized state. Your heart will pound rapidly and your soul will rip your chest open and bust into a dance, 1/3 reggae and 2/3 the "I am so dern happy that I am just going to fling my arms and legs around." All I am saying is..give it a listen. You will like it. I promise.

I found this CD to be one of the most refreshing recordings in years. The fresh approaches that these musicians/artists brought to the recording is something that is lacking in music nowadays. It is "jagged" enough to be an indie/subterranean record, yet sleek and appropriately produced, with well-thought arrangements and carefully placed emotions and ideas. Neko Case's presence is out of this world; she sounds a bit like Liz Phair, with that debonnaire attitude and natural "always-a-half-step-flat"-ness, but she's deffinetely a poigniant accent throughout the record.

Very neatly done synth work, although they tend to abuse a certain sawtooth setting.

Drum work is consistant, on-time, and often innovative for a pop-rock album. Bass work is a bit subdued and not well mixed. Guitars are quite inventive and they truly create a "wall of sound" with them.

This record gives me faith in true musicianship in the business again. Without a doubt, one of the best CD's of 2003.