Well, I’ve posted my first long, horribly boring essay (on Ibsen no less!), so I thought I’d write about something maybe more fun, like the New Pornographers show I saw this past weekend.
The New Pornographers are probably my favorite band as of late. If you don’t know them, they’re a Canadian indie-supergroup comprised of A.C. Newman, Dan Bejar, Neko Case, Kathryn Calder, John Collins, Blaine Thurier, Kurt Dahle and Todd Fancey. The first three names on that list you might recognize from their solo efforts. (Dan Bejar is also in Destroyer, and Swan Lake, another supergroup of sorts.) Case and Bejar have the most time-consuming commitments outside of TNP, and are often absent from the band’s shows, though the principal songwriters (Newman and Bejar) contributed to TNP’s latest release, “Challengers.” Though I very much enjoy Case’s country musings, and Bejar’s surrealistic crooning, I have to say I enjoy their performances in The New Pornographers much more than their solo work. I guess I’m just a sucker for straight ahead pop-indie-rock songs, especially with female harmony singers. (Neko Case has a fantastic voice, though I thought her and Kathryn Calder clashed at certain points. This kind of makes sense, as Calder generally sings Case’s parts on the older songs when Case is absent.)
The songs sound simpler than they are: A.C. Newman’s prosody and rhythmic sensibility is eccentric, and a good number of their songs have odd time signatures (cf. “The Jessica Numbers”). Mikey and I were standing right next to the soundboard, which allowed me to gawk at the soundguy and quietly judge him. On “The Laws Have Changed,” he boosted the chunking guitars, and completely drowned out the four part organ melody, which makes that song for me. In truth, the guitars were high in the mix for the entirety of the set, despite the presence of a mini-string section, which I guess is just a natural facet of the live setting: more rock, less nuance.
The actual performances strayed only slightly from the recorded versions, which makes for an generally boring live show, though the band’s inbetween song banter was cute, and kind of funny. (Newman quoted a Simpsons line, which immediately raises any band in my esteem.) The band seemed solely concerned with performing each song as accurately as possible, with very little live revisions, much less improvisations.
At one point in the set, after a false start on one of their new songs, Newman cracked a joke that “Kurt’s evil twin is playing drums.” (Or something to that effect.) I couldn’t help but think there was some kind of subtle jab there, considering the drummer’s time was all over the place during the set. “Jackie, Dressed in Cobras,” on which Newman sang for an absent Bejar, was played at hyperspeed, and it seemed like Newman and Fancey had difficulty keeping up. If they sped this up for live performances, it provides no new energy and just sounds rushed. Dahle clearly has the chops, but in the words of Jack Black, he’s a little loosey goosey and needs to tighten up the screws.
The setlist drew heavily from “Twin Cinema,” the band’s 2005 album, and “Challengers,” the soon-to-be-released LP. The standout new tunes were “All the Old Showstoppers,” a up-tempo rocker and “My Rights Versus Yours,” which has a great harmonized refrain to close out the song.
