Give a New Pornographers album a single, full listen, and you pretty much get the gist of the album. Like the best power pop, The New Pornographers\u2019 have a knack of making insanely catchy and memorable songs with massive riffs. <\/p>\n
The output of the individual band members, on the other hand, tends to fall under the \u2018slow burner\u2019 category of music. A.C. Newman\u2019s solo album The Slow Wonder<\/i> and Dan Bejar\u2019s Destroyer albums will most likely take a few listens for a listener to digest all of their quirks. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s not to say that The New Pornographers\u2019 albums don\u2019t reward with repeated listens. Unfortunately, like The Replacements and Sugar, if your band specializes in power pop your album output is usually limited to two or three memorable albums. And the New Pornographers are on album number four with Challengers<\/i>. <\/p>\n
The safest route for The New Pornographers would have been to find a nice middle ground between Electric Version<\/i> and Twin Cinema<\/i>. But they play it smart by making an album that will definitely not be confused with any of their other ones. And if you like The New Pornographers for their instantly catchiness, brace yourself: Challengers<\/i> is a slow burner. <\/p>\n
If you have Newman\u2019s solo album and a few Destroyer albums, you\u2019ll have no problem knowing which songs are Newman\u2019s and which songs are Bejar\u2019s. The Newman songs, specifically \u201cAll the Old Showstoppers,\u201d \u201cFailsafe\u201d and \u201cMutiny, I Promise You,\u201d retain that maddenly catchiness of some of The New Pornographers\u2019 best work. Bejar\u2019s songs are quirkier, using more instrumentation — not to mention Bejar\u2019s distinctive, high-pitched voice. While Bejar only composes about a quarter of the album, he supplies the highlight of the album with \u201cMyriad Harbor.\u201d <\/p>\n
The word \u201cmaturity\u201d has been tossed around repeatedly by rock critics to describe this album. Usually, that is a polite way of saying the album either contains far fewer hooks and memorable moments than before and is slightly boring, but professional. Yes, the disc is as mature as any other Pornographers albums, but the main drawback is the lack of opportunity for Neko Case to showcase her amazing vocals. She supplies some wonderful background vocals on \u201cAll the Old Showstoppers\u201d and \u201cMutiny, I Promise You,\u201d but the title track and \u201cGo Places\u201d are the only song where she\u2019s front and center, and both of those songs are musically not as interesting as other songs on the album. <\/p>\n
After six listens, Challengers<\/i> is still revealing itself. However, it does not attain those amazing layered vocal heights that helped make an album like Twin Cinema<\/i> a classic. What Challengers<\/i> provides is a way out of repetition for a band that easily could have slipped into it. If you\u2019re a fan of the band, you\u2019ll give the album the deserved turns it needs to settle in. If you\u2019re just discovering the band, this is probably not the \u201cgo to\u201d album that represents the band at its peak, but it’s not half bad either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":28930,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6944],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-40434","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-new-pornographers","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40434"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40434"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}