New Pornographers – The Electric Version
Think of your favorite sad-sack album, the one that should come packaged with a prescription for Paxil and stickered with a warning against operating heavy machinery while under its influence. Now behold that album’s polar opposite, the aural equivalent of a party in a can, The Electric Version.
The New Pornographers exploded out of nowhere — or, more specifically, Vancouver, which may be the same thing — to release Mass Romantic at the tail end of 2000. With this disc, the gang is back with another batch of rosy odes to the pop radio of their youth, from the Kinks to the Cars to Todd Rundgren to T. Rex.
As on the debut disc, Dan Bejar (better known as the mind behind Destroyer’s sharp indie-pop) and Neko Case (better known as, well, Neko Case) make the most of their cameos here; Bejar contributes a couple of cutting pop nuggets, and Case adds arena-ready vocals throughout. Manic drummer Kurt Dahle, bassist/producer John Collins and keyboardist Blaine Thurier reprise their roles, too, but more than ever it’s clear that the Pornographers are Carl Newman’s baby, as his boyish vocals and angular hooks inhabit almost every corner of these songs.
It’s tough to pluck just a handful of highlights from this 45-minute sonic sugar-rush. Among them: the giddy guitars and swirling keys of “The End Of Medicine”; Case and Newman’s powerful, tone-perfect vocal interplay on “The Laws Have Changed” and “Miss Teen Wordpower”; the ecstatic melodies and head-bopping rhythms of “Ballad Of A Comeback Kid” and “July Jones”; and, above all, the gotta-hear-it-to-believe-it cascading vocal round that closes “Testament To Youth In Verse”.