So you invite a few people round, you think maybe you’ll get some pizzas in, a few tins of beer, maybe it’ll be time to finally crack open that dusty bottle at the back of the cupboard, perhaps, if you’re feeling generous. With any luck a bottle or two will be brought along, just so there’s enough to go around. But then your guests arrive simultaneously with courses piled high on tiered plates, entire organic crops spilling out of carrier bags and fine vintages to match most tastes. All of a sudden your front room is like a competition-standard harvest festival. Call the local paper! A fantasy to you maybe, the unruly scavengers you mix with probably eat you out of house and home without an invite, but this is the world of Canada’s wonderfully opulent retro-pop supergroup The New Pornographers. And it is indeed a plentiful place.
Ok, so these people are only a supergroup insofar as we have been told they are one. The names Zumpano, Destroyer, Mint, Limblifter, Evaporators and Thee Goblins look like aliases from the Robot Wars forum to you just as much as they do us. But we can quite believe they are one. Rarely do you come across a band where each protagonist can so clearly be heard bringing something to the table, where each song is a loaded, dense weave of ingredients wholesome to the touch, full of sustenance and colour. It is rare to find a record where the majority of the arrangements are necessary and affecting, and not just there through force of habit. Of course all of this is especially rare in supergroups. But then with A.C. Newman at the helm, he who put out the faultlessly sharp, Costello-esque ‘Slow Wonder’ album last year, even without such a sturdy ship, in a leaky rowing boat perhaps, you’d guess the choppiest of waters could be charted.
For demonstration of this impeccable might, take ‘The Bleeding Heart Show’ which is like a snowball’s trip down a ravine; born as a lightweight flutter, a Death Cab For Cutie daydream, gaining momentum, changing direction and bundling forward furiously at gravity’s will, like Throwing Muses brandishing a flaming, youthful Michael Stipe in one hand and a gospel choir in the other. ‘The Jessica Numbers’ is a rigorously tightened clash of Beach Boys harmony, sharply filed arrowhead guitar and stuttering rhythms, like a high-brow Weezer. ‘Sing Me Spanish Techno’ is a brilliantly pert, chiming Shins-esque jangle-pop of the highest calibre. ‘Falling Through Your Clothes’ is a hall of mirrors of harmony, claustrophobic but multi-faceted. It’s an all-you-can-eat buffet with no hidden catches and an appetite that can’t be suppressed.