Challengers

With somewhat surprising speed, The New Pornographers became one of my favorite bands over the past year. I still don't own their debut album, but I quickly fell in love with their third effort, Twin Cinema, which was instantly lovable and never lost its vigor and power. Their preceding album Electric Version was also very good, but it took some time to get used to, and it didn't feel as well-rounded. Since Twin Cinema was a decided improvement on its predecessor I was very excited to see what they'd do with Challengers, which came out this year.

I've given Challengers about fifteen listens since I bought it, by which time most albums reveal their inner mettle. Nothing would make me happier than to say this weird Canadian superband has continued improving, but that would be disingenuous. No, our good friends The New Pornographers have tried to make beautiful music for us, but Challengers is plagued by what I would call some of the worst clutch decisions in music.

When I say clutch decisions, I refer to those small things, like a few lyrics in the chorus, that can make or break a song, or the frequency of story-telling and the tone it takes. In All the Things that Go to Make Heaven and Earth, the chorus is a reasonably predictable, "all of the things that go to make heaven and earth are here/all of the things that go to make heaven and earth". Ambiguity in lyrics is fine (see: The Mars Volta), but if you're going to be ambiguous, be interesting and poetic for Pete's sake. These poor lyrics are particularly disappointing because the song has probably the best music on the whole album thanks to the use of some high-pitched beep-making instrument--pipes?--that really makes the brain excited and expectant of more simple and repetitive but enjoyable lyrics. Instead we get simple and repetitive by themselves. Mutiny, I Promise You is similar in its difficulties, but its lyrics are infinitely better despite being dragged down by transitions from the chorus that feel like they should be much better and music that isn't as awesome as All the Things's.

Most of the songs in Challengers should just be placeholders or roleplayers. They're very imperfect, but you could find a place to put them and make them good in a strong album. Instead they have to support each other and thus enhance the others' mediocrity. One thing that really irks me, though, is that the one truly good song on the album, Adventures in Solitude, is the penultimate. It's followed by The Spirit of Giving, which is especially unfortunate because Dan Bejar has the lead vocals for this one and his voice just sounds bad in some songs, like here. It has a lot of good qualities, but each time Dan comes in to sing something you just want him to go away, and that's not the right feeling for the last song of an album. You want the best song there, damn it. Especially if it's a sad song like Adventures.

I just want to shake the entire band. Shake them and demand that they coalesce into a magical music-producing goo that will make me happy again. The female singer-thing that used to work closely with The New Pornographers didn't work on this album (but they fortunately brought in another female--if they lost the female vocals I'd probably explode from anger). I don't know if that had any effect, or what was going on. Challengers sounds like The New Pornographers for sure, but only because I can discern the old elements. The cohesive whole that I've come to expect is fractured and unevenly distributed. Key parts of most songs fall flat and ruin the whole thing. Overall I'd give the album two and a half out of five stars if anyone's counting. You must buy it if you like The New Pornographers, because it's always nice to hear more from them even if it isn't great, but otherwise spend your cash on some other album.

But who the hell am I talking to?

God damn it, I've become John, writing reviews that no one ever reads. Fuck.