Ranking the five best New Pornographers albums

I wonder if A.C. Newman does any ghost writing for acts in need: a middle eight here, a place for a harmony there. Certainly he’d make an ace producer for hire. The band for which he writes most of its songs has recorded more than their share of good albums, but I won’t listen to them anymore for reasons explained below. At best, the New Pornographers’ early records created the impression that these songs could go anywhere, even past their own opacity.

1. Twin Cinema (2005)

Kurt Dahle was the crucial element before Twin Cinema, but the New Pornographers benefits from his drumming like the others don’t. A minor masterpiece of vacuum-sealed power pop, Twin Cinema works best if you treat Bejar and Newman’s lyrics and voices as dispatches from the Portuguese: they mean something to somebody, but listeners in search of meaning should look best to the formal audacity of “Sing Me Spanish Techno,” the title track, “Falling Through Your Clothes,” and even “Jackie, Dressed in Cobras” (Bejar sings the latter as if finding aural equivalents for that comma). Forcing meaning anyway is Neko Case, joining with her colleagues for an outro singalong on “The Bleeding Heart Show” that redeems power pop — or serves as its epitaph.

2. Electric Version (2003)

My intro to the New Pornos unnerved me because when I could understand the songs I realized they were about the experience of listening to music, or, specifically, the experience of listening to The New Pornographers. For A.C. Newman, the Raspberries’ “Stereo” was as beatific a vision of loveliness as Humphrey Bogart in scratchy black and white was for young Bryan Ferry in Newcastle; the more blown the speakers, the more sacred the experience. Even Bejar, on the evidence of “Testament to Youth in Verse,” pledges his troth to the old forms, to “dedications to the same old curse”; his dedication includes a chopped Sam Cooke quote. Case bursts in with “All for Swinging You Around,” reminding them that songs convey feelings about other people too.

3. Mass Romantic (2000)

The Magnetic Fields or, to mention kindred spirits, Ben Folds Five would’ve titled a song “The Slow Descent into Alcoholism,” banged on the pianos and set their guitars on chug. Neither would’ve included Newman’s “Salvation holdout central” in a winsome falsetto. When Case sings the chorus of “Letter from an Occupant” I understand why the men in her songs (often written by Newman) leave her — her presence, her realness, terrifies them (she’s more conventionally mysterious on her own records). Often creating the impression of interchangeability, New Pornographers albums depend on dense mixes and unceasing momentum. On Mass Romantic the approach hadn’t hardened yet; the players sound as if they’re feeling each other out. Bejar’s “To Wild Homes” has a poignancy that other albums would have hosed off.

4. Whiteout Condidtions (2017)

What does it means that the New Pornos released their fourth best album in 2017? Not much. “On their first album I’ve listened to in its entirety since 2007,” I wrote last year, “the New Pornos slow down the tempos to accommodate the aging of formula or boredom with formula, I still can’t tell. I’ve played the damn thing at least twenty times in the last two weeks and still can’t remember a musical tag on the second side besides the Imperial Teen-aping ‘Juke,’ but the first half offers compensations: the strummed acoustic guitar and Case’s prissy enunciation in ‘This is the World of the Theater.'” On “High Ticket Attractions,” they say fuck it and graft an organ line straight from any number of Carter-era Cars songs.

5. Challengers (2007)

In the middle of my journey, I realized I had little patience for power pop, the whitest and most exhausting of genres. “Mutiny, I Promise You” would’ve enthralled me had it appeared on Mass Romantic; in 2007 it came off like polysyllabic stickers glued to a whiteboard. Case and the keyboard parts impress as ever. Yet it’s Dan Bejar who gives the most striking performance in his own “Myriad Harbor,” about goofing off with your bandmates shopping for American folk anthologies in New York record stores.