Hailing from Vancouver, British Columbia, The New Pornographers have been vocal on the music scene since their 2000 debut, Mass Romantic. Since then, the group, fronted and envisioned by A.C. Newman and with several others (including Neko Case, who is having a good run on the indie scene, both in Canada and in the States), have released Electric Version in 2003 and most recently Twin Cinema in 2005.
The music of the New Pornographer is based often on a pounding keyboard and rhythm section coupled with melodies dripping with pop. The songs on Twin Cinema are all instantly catchy, with vocal and synth melodies blazed into your head for days after the song was heard. Every song on the album is under five minutes and follows a verse-chorus-verse standard, so is the set in perfect pop fashion, just long enough for listeners to get into the song but still be aching for more.
Listening through Twin Cinema, you can hear the vocal harmonies and falsetto of the Beach Boys, the punk stylings of the Clash and enough shifting of time signatures to keep the listener engaged and distracted yet not seem pretentious. The music is incredibly clean and tight. The piano and keyboards drive the melody most often with perfect bouncing lines while in the background the drums pound in off beats and resounding fury. Then in the slower, laid-back tracks such as "These Are The Fables" and "Streets Of Fire", the vocals of Neko Case, gorgeous and hypnotizing, carry the song to another level.
What separates this album from the sometimes repetitive world of indie pop, is the hidden complexity. Every listen brings new melodies, new instruments. The songs are great for thumping dancing, but also for headphone listening. The eclectic array of instruments and rhythms catch new fans at every party where the record is slipped into a stereo somewhere.
Pic from www.i-see-sound.com