The New Pornographers - Electric Version

Electric Version (2003) ****

My last review of this band was pretty silly, but this is a silly band that's impossible to take seriously, like They Might Be Giants with bigger amps.  Three years on the New Pornos still sound the same, which is to say they still sound like Weezer, but the good Weezer, the Weezer that had stuck with the same style and songs of their debut and never delivered the crapfest that's been their career since their first two albums.  If only someone had assassinated Rivers Cuomo in 1996, the world would be a sunnier place.  Ooo, they've just released a State Farm Insurance jingle!  I'm not kidding, Weezer just sold that shit OUT!  But back to Neko Case, who I and most North American het males with a pulse want to fuck, and a bunch of other Canuck douchebag dudes nobody even bothers to remember their names or gives a shit.  Yeah, go ahead, NAME a single OTHER member of this band off the top of your head without consulting Altrockapedia.  Can't do it.  Didn't think so.  Also, in post-Pixies Slacker-Generation-XYZ fashion, the words are of no great importance, they're just there as part of the sonic elegance even when the lyrics are trying to convey something meaningful, they still amount to meaninglessness.  Which is a roundabout way to say that I can't remember any of the song titles unless you shove the CD coaster in front of my nose when I'm not using the back of it to snort coke like the monkey on the front.  Just kidding, I've never snorted coke.  But I have watched other people snort it, so maybe I've accidentally received some of that secondhand contact high I keep hearing people go off about as an excuse to ban cigarettes and alcohol from pubs.  Might explain this review.

Anyway, songs.  This album has songs.  Songs on it.  Songs played on electrical instrumentation, as you can title by the title, by a sextet (tee hee, I just said 'sex'), in a modern rock style, sung in modern indie rock fashion by soulless hipster nerds who sound like they've had their balls cut off by their emasculating girlfriends, like that pussy-whipped asshole in Arcade Fire.  The guitar tone never varies that it's a beyond orgasmically pleasurable relief when for once the guitars CHANGE and "Loose Translation," starts off with some strummy ACOUSTICS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  LIKE SHIT WOW MAN.  The songs are all good but the song quality dips towards the end of the disc, but I'm not sure if that's because the songs themselves are actually weaker or my ears have fatigued on the style.  I suspect that latter as much as the former.  Like I said in my last review, why bother reviewing this track by track when all the songs are in the same style and vein, and by vein I do not mean that in either a heroin or vampire way.  Heroin sucking vampires?  No, the New Pornographers seem like comfy Canadian yuppies from the suburbs.  That doesn't make the New Pornographers any less great.  You're not going to criticize the Ramones' debut for all sounding the same, are you?  Not when all the songs on the first Ramones LP all sound so bloodyfantasticGREAT.

You like bubblegum?  Of course you do.  You wouldn't be human if you didn't, you'd be some sort of sick psychopath who needs to be isolated from society for his own good and that of the community.  Here's the odd thing I do with bubblegum, is that I don't chew it and spit it out, I bite off little chunks and chew it and swallow it.  Yeah, I eat bubblegum.  It tastes good.  And no, despite what your momma told you, your stomach will not explode.  That only happens if you mix Pop Rocks and Pepsi.  The New Pornographers are a band that Pop Rocks but they don't Pepsi.  This may be the worst review I've written so far, or the best.  It's so easy.  Somehow, when you just type out a bunch of rambling stream of consciousness, the words just POUR OUT.  Just ask Lester Bangs or Mark Prindle!