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!

The New Pornographers - Mass Romantic

Mass Romantic (2000) ****

An alleged "supergroup" led by principals Colin Newman (of Zumpano, whom I've heard precisely one song on a power pop compilation from), Dan Bejar (of Destroyer, whom I've never heard), Neko Case (whose alt.country records I've never heard, but I've seen several racy photos of her on the internet), and some other people from shitty little indie-rock bands no one outside of Moosejaw, Saskatchewan has ever heard (I'm assuming here), the New Pornographers do not peddle the cheesy soft-disco bubble-funk instrumentals set to the sound of a lonely housewife and appliance repair man moaning, as you'd naturally expect from their name.  No, this is bubblegummy indie-rock, an infectious, '70s glammy stomp that recalls the best of Sweet and Wizzard, very very featherlite and very very very catchy as genital herpes, but with sleek modernized guitar tones.  The Achilles' heel is beyond obvious after one exhausting listen (even at 41 minutes, this seems to go on forever):  their ABBA-meets-the-Ramones power pop formula gets real wearying real fast because, same as same as same as the Ramones, everything all sounds the same.  The tunes are all relentlessly upbeat and saccharine, with zero emotional heft, and the guitar tone never, ever changes.  Some of the songs are better than others ("Letter From an Occupant) and some worse ("Breakin' the Law"), and in small doses of three or four of these twisty-turny songs, it's a sugar rush, but you know how quickly sugar highs leave you queasily hungover.  Whichever New Pornographers album you prefer thus entirely depends on which one you heard first.  Nearly every other critic in the world prefers this debut to all the other albums since this was the Porno's first, but I personally prefer their second album because that was my first exposure to the wonderful world of Canadian pornography.

A song-by-song review therefore is as unnecessary as a year-by-year Playmate review, but let's get it on, babe.  The title track celebrates the mass wedding of thousands of couples in South Korea in a giant ceremony by Sun Myung Yung's Unification Church.  "The Fake Headlines" excoriates Fox News, Al Jazeera, Pravda, the National Enquirer, and the North Korean national news service.  "The Slow Descent Into Alcoholism," is a spoken-word piece cobbled together from the poetry of Charles Bukowski.  "Mystery Hours" concerns the legendary missing minutes of time that got misplaced when the Catholic Church switched over from the Julian to Gregorian calendar.  "Jackie" on first glance is a cutesy-retro mash-note to Jackie Onassis, until you listen to the lyrics and realize that Dan Bejar is singing about raiding the Kennedy masoleum, disinterring her corpse, and having his wicked way with her cold, dead bones.  "Letter From an Occupant," is a social protest number in solidarity with postal workers' unions.  "To Wild Homes," is an autobiographical tale of Newman's raising as an abandoned orphan by wild meese in the northern Yukon province.  "The Body Says No," is a bitter lament about a thwarted date rape, sung sympathetically from the point of view of the attempted date rapist.  "Dad wouldn't you believe, she didn't need me!"  "Execution Day," is yet another rock song about Gary Gilmore.  "Centre for Holy Wars," (sic; get these ignorant Canucks a spellchecker) is a prescient warning released an entire year before 9/11, which not only eerily predicts the Twin Towers' demise but calls Mohammed Atta and Bin Laden out by name.  "The Mary Martin Show," tells the true story of a Montreal children's show host convicted of pedophilia and assassinated by Quebecois separatist extremists.  And finally, "Breakin' the Law," is indeed a cover of the Judas Priest classic, complete with cameo vocals from Rob Halford himself, who thoughtfully includes a rap break in the middle to keep with the times, hangin' tough like it's 1989.

But don't turn the album off just yet.  If you let the CD continue to play, over half an hour later comes the secret hidden bonus track, which in keeping with the beastiality and Canadian pride themes of the disc, consists of the moanings and gruntings of a beaver being screwed by a moose.  And by beaver, I do not refer to the slang term for a female vagina, but the North American mammal species, that apparently looks like this: 

That's one of the photos that showed up on the first page of my Google image search for beaver, and yes, I had the moderate filter settings on.