New Pornographers – Twin Cinema
Wasting no time getting to the great stuff, the New Pornographers kick off Twin Cinema with a stone-cold killer. That would be the title track, and, as a slanted-and-enchanted dose of lethal anti-pop, the song doesn’t sound like the rest of the band’s third album. Over gloriously off-kilter guitars, ragged-glory bass and whipcrack drums, the Pornographers’ two best-known members — singer-guitarist Carl Newman and rebel chanteuse Neko Case — trade vocals like the coolest kids in college rock. What’s most mind-blowing about “Twin Cinema” is that the verses are actually catchier than the outright unassailable chorus.
The New Pornographers have received no shortage of platitudes since the release of their 2001 debut Mass Romantic and the equally adored follow-up, Electric Version. If the collective still has doubters, Twin Cinema serves official notice that it’s safe to believe the hype.
The goodness doesn’t stop at track 1. After coming out of the gate like Chapel Hill in the early ’90s, Newman, Case and their co-conspirators spend the bulk of the album channeling the kaleidoscopic pop of the late ’60s. While occasionally sounding like revenge of the flower people, Twin Cinema is the band’s most ambitious album to date, with songs swinging from fabulously faux-funk (“Three Or Four”) to space-oddity folk (“Falling Through Your Clothes”) to Summer of Love retro-pop (“Broken Breads”).
The second-greatest moment on the fourteen-track outing? That would be “The Bleeding Heart Show”, which starts off as a stardusted ballad and then finishes with a show-stopping off-Broadway coda the Polyphonic Spree would trade their white robes for. Yes, the song is a killer. What’s scariest about that on Twin Cinema is that it has plenty of company.