August is the biggest month of year for the music industry. Albums drop like pennies from heaven/flies. Because there's so many frikkin' albums out right now worth talking about, all week long, tMR will be all music-all the time.
The New Pornographers
ChallengersMatador
It's tempting to just lay on you a bunch of lyrics excerpts from their 4th album. It'd be enough to convince just about anyone. '
Adventures in Solitude', with a harp backing and the same inventive dual vocal technique used in '
The Laws Have Changed', is a major departure for the band, but also my favorite song on the album. Sample lyric: 'Balancing on one wounded wing/ circling the edge of the never ending/ the best of the vanished marvels have gathered inside your door'. It's elegiac, graceful and playing on repeat over and over on my iPod. It's the sort of thing this band does better than anyone else, hovering just beyond the cotton candy sphere of saccharine pop, but still basking in its glow. A nod to The Move, '
All The Old Showstoppers' is upbeat and road-trippy. '
Unguided' runs 6:30 and A.C. Newman uses the length to craft a rock song that not just builds, but expands, twists and finds interesting moments to settle before the requisite epic climax required of really-long-songs. Newman says that '
Mutiny, I Promise You' is "the most Bacharach/Wilson/Webb" of the bunch, but honestly, I hear Belle & Sebastian. If it weren't for tomorrow's album, I would call this the best album of the year so far. Get it.
Out Aug. 21.Labels: music
The New Pornographers