Although no one can define it, most of us know
pornography when we see it, and we do not approve. Never mind that
we’re consuming it in record quantities; we still freak out
at the sight of a wayward nipple. It’s strange that something
as ubiquitous as porn has so few champions — and such
lukewarm ones at that. Rather than endorse it on its own merits,
its defenders usually treat it as a First Amendment issue, the
firewall that keeps burqas off our backs and Rick Santorum out of
our unmentionables. Because its primary purpose is to provoke one
specific reaction — sexual excitement — pornography is
to literature what an advertising jingle is to music: a crass
simulacrum, too manipulative and obvious to meet the lofty criteria
of art. “In pornographic novels,” wrote accused
pornographer Vladimir Nabokov, “action has to be limited to
the copulation of clichés. Style, structure, imagery should
never distract the reader from his tepid lust.”
Poor Vlad never got to hear the New
Pornographers. Despite their almost total disdain for
clichés (copulatory or otherwise), everyone’s favorite
Canadian power-pop septet is aptly named. It’s impossible to
imagine a band more devoted to excitement, more single-minded in
its pursuit of satisfaction, more successful in replicating this
arousal/gratification cycle without becoming monotonous. If the New
Pornographers weren’t so inhumanly great, their brazen desire
to please might seem a smidge whorish. That’s where style,
structure, and imagery come in. Inhabiting the outer territories of
catchy, the New Pornos make songs that stick to your cerebrum
without making you want to bash your head against a wall. Even more
amazing, they don’t do it the easy way, through the usual
bubblegum mnemonics: the comforting verse-chorus-verse structure,
predictable rhythms and time signatures, melodies that go through
their paces like obedient geldings at a dressage competition.
Co-frontman and principal songwriter Carl (A.C.) Newman knows pop music
inside out, which is why he can turn it inside out without ruining it.
If Twin Cinema, the New Pornos’ third CD, isn’t
universally heralded as the triumph that it is, it’s only
because Mass Romantic and Electric Version set the bar so ridiculously high. Like its
predecessors, Twin Cinema contrives a dialogic discourse of dulcet buzz
and chugalug, distorted bass and chirping synths, sweetly
contending male/female vocals, and lyrics that are perfectly poised
between surreal and silly. It’s louder and maybe a bit
weirder than earlier efforts, but it still sounds unmistakably like
a New Pornographers record, which is just as it should be. Whether
you call this confederacy of geniuses a supergroup or a side
project matters not: However busy Newman, singer Neko Case, and
singer/multiinstrumentalist Dan Bejar might be with their separate
careers, their Pornographic output is inspired, disciplined, and
refreshingly unencumbered by warring egos.
Newman’s arrangements are intricate but
surprisingly unfussy, sonic spiderwebs glinting with hooks and
trembling with reverb. Case’s voice is twangless,
pitch-perfect, and clarion, big but never melodramatic. Bejar,
whose stoner prophecies and fey phrasing make Destroyer one of the
best indie-rock concerns going, unleashes the full force of his
considerable charm in his three contributions. Drummer Kurt Dahle,
finally taking his well-deserved place at the front of the mix,
alternates Bonhamesque heroics and quirky counterpoint, and those
poor remaining chumps who never get mentioned by name — well,
they’re awesome, too. Whether you prefer the headlong sugar
rush of “Use It,” the scratched-vinyl cadences of
“Falling Through Your Clothes,” the plangent psych-prog
of “These Are the Fables,” or the manic Bowieisms of
“Jackie, Dressed in Cobras,” depends, much like the
human sexual response, on subjective factors. On Twin Cinema, every track is
a money shot.
This article appears in Sep 1-7, 2005.
