The New Pornographers – Challengers*
Matador

The New Pornographers recorded one of my favourite albums of all time back in 2000. Mass Romantic occupies a unique position in my music collection because I have never once become sick of its charms. Call me next time there’s sunny weather where I am and ask me what I am blasting. In fact, save yourself a phone call. I guarantee it will be Mass Romantic. Twelve of the sweetest, most downright invigorating examples of pop music I have ever heard. The only thing I could possibly hold against that record is that it had lousy artwork and the fact that it was inexplicably, nay inexcusably, not entitled The New Pornographers and Neko.

Of course, once you achieve perfection, there remains the question of what to do next. Newman, Bejar, Case and co floundered a bit on Electric Version but did manage to recapture some of the majesty on Twin Cinema. The critics did back-flips again and I can understand why. The New Porn really did make one of the best records of my lifetime and all of the associated bands (namely Destroyer, Superconductor and Neko Case’s solo work) have produced extraordinary music. Still, critical acclaim starts to feel a bit hollow after a while. In their native Canada, The New Porn have done more than respectable business. Elsewhere, they remain thoroughly obscure. That was all well and good until everyone and their dad bought a copy of The Neon Bible. If the title of this album is anything to go by, this might be considered something of a riposte.

Sure enough, this is the most polished and stripped-down music the New Porn have attempted to date. The vocals are up front in the mix and the guitars are bright to the point of incandescence. Personally, I don’t think it works at all. One of the pre-requisites of power pop is a bit of, well, power. Whereas a real challenger would explode from the gate, this one trots. It gathers a bit of pace later on but it’s too late - the race finished half an hour ago. The opening two tracks are both Newman songs sung in light harmony with Case and for the briefest of moment it sounds like a less experimental version of Stars or a modernised Fleetwood Mac. The latter band comparison is interesting for a number of reasons. If you will remember, after the sheer pop bliss of Rumours, Lindsey Buckingham presented his record label with the adventurous and varied Tusk. He had the luxury because Rumours had already sold millions of records. I can’t shake the suspicion that the New Porn have this the wrong way round. They have made their masterwork and now they seem to be trying to reverse engineer mainstream acceptance.

Still, you can’t blame them at all. They deserve success more than any other band you care to name. The trouble is, I don’t think this is the album to do it. When they gather some much-needed pace on ‘All The Things That Go To Make Heaven And Earth’ things start to look up. Likewise, the expansive and roomy ‘Failsafe’ is an enjoyable blast of shimmering pop. The other songs drift into one over-polished mess. Even the usually reliable Bejar wildcards sound muted due to the horrible mix. Criminally, I can’t even hear drummer extraordinaire Kurt Dahle on most songs. There isn’t an obvious single either, which seems to defy the point of making such an obvious ploy for wider acceptance. Still, I hope beyond hope that there is an audience for this music because as someone who has the previous three records, after the requisite ten listens to write this review, I certainly don’t ever want to hear this again. It worked! I will not buy this record. I really hope someone will though.

Tommy Dski