Dancing About Architecture, Vol. V

September 30, 2005

Tonight’s Episode: The New Pornographers with guests Destroyer and some band we missed

September 30, 2005 at The Belly Up, Solana Beach, CA

The last and first time I saw The New Pornographers play, it was at the Casbah here in San Diego, when they were on tour for their sophomore album, “Electric Version”. That was before I was wasting my time and yours writing these reviews, alas. But I’m excited to write this one, because this second viewing was a great show, although different in some interesting ways from the first one. First, though, we must cover the opening bands.

The first opening band, Immaculate Spongeheads or something like that, sucked. Actually, I have no idea whether or not they sucked, because I didn’t pick up Art and Vera until too late by Swiss non-rock-‘n’-roll standards, and by the time we got there we missed the first band. Judging from the lack of promotional material at the goodies table as well as a lack of overheard conversations dealing with them, I’d guess they weren’t that special. No love lost.

We did get there just in time for Destroyer. This is the side project of New Pornographers co-songwriter and backup singer, Dan Bejar. Or Destroyer is his main project, and the NPs are an aside. Arthur, a veritable expert on all things Destroyer by virtue of having heard of them and actually owning an album or two, wasn’t sure where Bejar’s priorities lay. In any case, this is the guy who sings the lead on “Jackie”, which I believe he wrote, and a few other NP songs – you know the voice. Now imagine that voice singing roughly eight songs in a row, over a droning indie power pop standard four-piece, songs which sound like pastiches of NP clips strung together at roughly the same tempo. That’s more or less the Destroyer experience. My friend Dave (who, incidentally, introduced me to the NPs by randomly sending me their first CD some years ago, and hence opened my eyes to the burgeoning new world of serious power pop) has claimed that the NPs’ songs are so good because of Bejar’s songwriting contributions, such that front man A.C. Newman gets more credit than he perhaps deserves. If that were true, than Destroyer’s songs ought to be so sublimely crafted that they would seem as if they had always existed as natural and true as mathematics and were just waiting for the first capable medium to coalescence them out of the ether. That’s probably too much to ask. What Destroyer’s songs really sound like are the little bits of pop hooks you sometimes come up with on your way to work, but lack the will or, let’s face it, the talent to expand into full-fledged songs. That said, there’s nothing to dislike about Destroyer’s songs; they just aren’t as cohesive as POP songs, which is what they seem to be trying for. “Mayor of Simpleton” by XTC: that’s a perfect pop song in large part because it’s got an A section, a bridge, and a chorus, and they are pieced together not only seamlessly, but also in the exact order you expect and therefore want them to be. The audience seemed to like Destroyer, though. I would argue that Bejar’s talent is in taking those pop elements he seems so good at crafting, and putting them together in a way that feels novel and disjointed only because the song structures aren’t as formulaic as you expect them. So this is a different kind of power pop approach: the disengaging kind. The actual performance was mostly boring. When I say “standard four-piece”, I mean that none of the musicians, including Bejar on rhythm guitar, played anything that stood out in any way, just banged out the chords. The last song had some time changes which, in tried and true fashion, added some interest to an otherwise mediocre melody. As an opening band, Destroyer was good at getting us in the mood for the main event, but I wouldn’t go specifically to see them.

When after a short break the New Pornographers came on stage, they came in waves – they’re a fairly large band now. In the first wave was a young woman who is not Neko Case (who is, in fact, Newman’s niece), and it may be taken as a curious note on the crowd that many exclamations of “We want Neko” and the like were heard; this could also be interpreted as evidence for Neko’s current status as indie rock diva (sic, Art). The band, on this tour, consists of Newman up front on voice and his indispensable Sears-issue guitar, Neko to his right on voice and her equally indispensable tambourine (much cheering, “We love you Neko”, etc.), a lead guitarist who was new around the time of “Electric Version”, whose name I don’t know and who stood towards the back, Blane Thurier on keys, Kurt Dahle on drums, big John Collins on bass (he also doubled as the bassist for Destroyer), and the niece Kathryn something on keys and voice. Why two keyboard players? Anyway, the band opened with the title track, side 1/track 1 of their new album, “Twin Cinema”. I’ve never known a band to open a show with the first song off the album they are promoting on the tour, but what the hell? It’s a catchy song that works well in both contexts and got everyone immediately bouncing.

They then played probably all the good songs from the new album, which I know now is all of side one and half of side two, interspersed with the best songs from “E.V.” and some of our old favorites from their debut, “Mass Romantic”. I provide this obvious and nondescript summary to introduce what I found interesting about a good band touring for their third album. The first album, well, it was so stunning that “E.V.” could hardly surpass it. There are great songs on that second record, and we heard them played live last Saturday, but there are some middlin ones, too (and we did hear one of those, the only dull moment of the whole show). So this band should, by album three, return in high stride with either a return to form or, a la Radiohead, a totally different tack which usually means a depressing album. This band accomplished the former, mostly by continuing to make really good choices about how to distribute their assets. One of the NPs’ greatest strengths is that everyone can be playing or singing as loudly as possible, and it sounds great. Both Newman and Bejar can write songs like that. But they have some other aces: they can start with a beautiful stripped down melody (generally sung by Neko), and build on it until it’s blaring but still beautiful. There’s one new song that starts, sweartogod, like a troubadour ballad by Donovan, but builds by turns until reaching the never-ending chorus of “Hey la” that is so joyous it makes you want to dance unashamed with your best friends in the middle of a remote field at two in the morning. Another song had Neko on lead vocal, but it was so obviously penned by Newman that I heard his voice instead. But if she weren’t there wailing like a Siren, the vocals would be all Newman and Bejar, whose voices could never divert sailors to the rocky shore. So what makes the New Pornographers better than Destroyer is in part the players, but also the fact that they have two great songwriters who contribute distinct styles. Newman is straight, formulaic and economical, whereas Bejar is rhapsodic and expansive. Individually they may be repetitive, but together they give us a balanced approach with a broad range.

The band’s live shows have been criticized for being a little off, with harmonies and audience interaction and so on, but at this show those criticisms could only be lobbed at Bejar, and it wasn’t his fault, exactly. He only came on stage for a few of the songs, and from the start, he was completely drunk. It can be tiresome watching drunk musicians, or anybody for that matter, try to overcompensate by fiercely focusing their concentration on the task at hand, to the point of distraction for everyone else. Every time Bejar was on stage, he had a different bottle of beer. He sang OK drunk, but, ya know. A sweet moment in the show came when he bumped into Newman’s guitar, and Newman gave him a friendly, tolerant smile that put it all together for me: NP live shows are, now, like watching an uninterrupted re-recording session of their greatest hits and new stuff. They don’t expand, contract, revamp, or alter their songs in any way, just play them straight up. So it will be mostly solid, but one of the band members will of course show up to the session drunk and they’ll have to fix it all in post-production. I felt like we were all in the studio with them while they layed down some tracks, and that’s fun. The minimal interaction certainly was a contrast with the last time I saw them, in a smaller club where all the band members, including the daft drummer Dahle, chatted with the audience like we were all sharing beers. This time, it was a bigger venue with a high stage and lots more people – a more diverse crowd, too, a sign of spreading popularity. So we got the occasional comments defending Canada and making fun of the sound guy – it was like WE were the sound guy catching all the bloopers between takes. We left the show feeling great about ourselves and about Canada and about the future of accessible rock music. And, let’s be frank, we like the idea of Neko Case being associated with the word “pornography”. It’s not even that she’s all that good-looking, but then, it didn’t matter with the Sirens either.