The New Pornographers
Electric Version
Matador

Electric Version, the second album by the cheerful group of musicians known as the New Pornographers, is buoyant enough to inspire many music reviewers to cart out their "summer listening" adjectives. They helpfully compare the aural experience to various sugary foods and beverages; more often than not, it's soda.

The music can be frothy; it can be fizzy, bubbly, cheery and it most definitely is catchy. However, "bubbly" and "frothy" are descriptive of disposable acts (insert your own list of flash-in-the-pans here, and title the exercise "From Looking Glass to Jill Scott: Evaporating Pop Stars"). Electric Version should not drift away with the last waves of summer, in the flotsam with Huey Lewis, Shaggy and C+C Music Factory. It's an album's worth of smart, solid pop music that lingers in the memory.

The Vancouver, British Columbia-based Pornographers were something of a side project up until the release of Mass Romantic. The members all had other bands or budding solo careers to attend to (most notably singer-songwriter Neko Case, whose most recent album, Blacklisted, received glowing notices and got her a gig opening for Nick Cave on tour).

Songwriting duties on the first album were split between Dan Bejar of the Destroyers and former Zumpano member Carl Newman, who share a number of influences — Brian Wilson and Big Star among them — and an affection for the pop power chord. On Mass Romantic, Bejar's efforts impressed the most. Electric Version, however, is Newman's record. (Bejar is listed in the album's liner notes as a "secret member," though he contributes three songs.)

If Bejar is the Pornographers' secret member, Case is their secret weapon. Her self-penned solo work is darker. With the Pornographers, she works as a for-hire vocalist, and the Go-Gos vocal qualities on Electric Versions may surprise her fans. "I go in and do what they say — I'm just a total puppet in this band," she said in an interview with Canadian music magazine Exclaim. That's modest but misleading. Case's singing, like that of influences Tina Turner, Chrissie Hynde and Les Rita Mitsouko's Catherine Ringer, has amazing flexibility. Her clear, effortless vocals on "All for Swinging You Around" and "The Laws Have Changed" are a necessary counterpoint to Newman and Bejar's thinner voices. She's like Frances McDormand in a supporting film role, an immediate energizer whenever she appears. She's invaluable.

The New Pornographers may have had a low-key beginning, but they're starting to sound less like a collection of musicians jamming together and more like a band. The production is clean, the playing is sharp, and the hooks are substantial. The Waltons could hang their terrycloth bathrobes on one of these hooks.

The Pornographers' strengths are nowhere more apparent than on Electric Version's stand-out track, Newman's "The Laws Have Changed": a hook you can't shake, an insistent rhythm section, and great vocal interplay between Newman and Case. Newman's "From Blown Speakers" benefits from terrific harmonies, and "Loose Translation" coasts along effortlessly on a sweet lead vocal and a guitar lick the boys from Outkast might describe as "chonky." Newman, like Marshall Crenshaw and Chris Bell, crafts melodies that captivate, and he doesn't bury them in the mix.

Dan Bejar is the Robyn Hitchcock of the outfit. His reedy vocal work would be right at home on Globe of Frogs; however, his songs are as good as Hitchcock's and better-produced. This is particularly true of "Testament To Youth in Verse," which features a vocal round at the two-minute mark that is giddily satisfying, a chorus of voices simulating the ringing of bells by repeating a "no-no-no" refrain. It's a satisfying prog moment without the deadening seriousness of prog.

Bejar, also like Hitchcock, is incapable of writing a straightforward lyric. (Newman caught that cold, too.) "Testament To Youth in Verse" is a terrific song, but what are we to make of Bejar's lyrics? He argues that rock lyrics are doggerel in the opening verse:

Should you go looking for a testament to youth in verse/ Variations of the age-old curse/ You blame the stations when they play you like a fool/ And like a fool you get played with.

He backs up his argument in "Ballad of a Comeback Kid":

Recite your lines/ And I'll quote scripture/ Everything was fine until membership lost its privileges/ Everyone in town/ Wanted to be around you/ This went on for a while until they finally found you.

There's no filler on Electric Version, but there is a bit of sameness. Put simply, there's a lot of great Paul McCartney here, but they could use a little John Lennon. The New Pornographers might consider adding some Case songs to the next album. A bit of her country melancholy amid the shimmering melodies and irreverence of Newman and Bejar would be quite a statement.

— Christopher Hickman (hickatz at mindspring dot com)