new New Pornographers

good Get Guilty trax IMO:

Ten or Twelve Things
Heartbreak Rides
Hitman/Dancer
Thunderbolts
Days/Days Off

best Bejar trax w/ NPs:

Jackie
Jackie, Dressed in Cobras
Streets of Fire
Myriad Harbour
Balad of a Comeback Kid

"The Spirit of Giving" is win, too, no? Without or without the tongue in his cheek, that's a terrific song.

yeah I love that song too, but I don't suspect that's widely shared.

Also, love Dan. The anti-Bejar sentiment in here is all out of wack.

Srsly. "A Testament To Youth In Verse" is one of my very favorite NPs songs!

Also, when I saw them on the last tour in Cleveland, Dan was not with them, so they had Will Sheff from Okkervill River come out and do "Myriad Harbor" with them and it was great.

good Get Guilty trax IMO:

Ten or Twelve Things
Heartbreak Rides
Hitman/Dancer
Thunderbolts
Days/Days Off

these plus prophets, palace, the changeling, young atlantis, the collected works.

i know the arrangements are very straight pop/rock, but as a songwriter he was completely on fire.

Which tracks does Neko sing on the new one?

Re: Get Guilty: Thunderbolts, Prophets and The Heartbreak Rides are all excellent. Otherwise it's at best mildly diverting, at worst forgettable.

I'd probably mind Bejar less if the timbre of his voice didn't irritate the hell out of me.

I don't mind the timber - unless I happen to trip over it LOL - it's the quality of the songs that's the trouble, though now that someone mentioned it "The Spirit of Giving" is quite nice. His songs are decent enough, but to the vegetable samosa of Newman's best work, they are but a poppadam.

Looks like they may be about to slap their best album cover onto their worst album.

why would it be their worst album

I have little proof, just a morning's worth of dread.

do not despair.

Damn, I would have clicked on this thread earlier if I'd known we were all showing Dan Bejar what for. His voice disrupts the vibe of an album like no other.

http://themoderatevoice.com/wordpress-engine/files/5361392.jpg

do all the bejar-in-new pornos haters like destroyer solo?

I've got Rubies. I like the Neil Young song at the end, but the preceding 11 David Bowie songs don't do much for me. (How's that for reductive dismissal?!)

I don't hate the Bejar NP songs, but I wouldn't miss them much if they weren't there.

bejar songs are usually the high points of NPs records imo ... not that I don't like the rest, but he is always welcome.

Get Guilty just doesn't have the sort of variety in the arrangements that you expect from a Newman project.

This is exactly it, I think. I'm relistening now, and there's some good stuff here (some of the choruses especially), but there's something really homogenous about it.

The production on tat record bothers me; way too much reverb.

*that

Does Neko sing lead on any of the songs off the new album?

i don't think anyone knows yet?

but i assume so as she appears on the album in some capacity

and that's how they've always done things

I hope they finally give Neko some fast ones to sing. Inexplicably, they haven't since Electric Version.

You are all crazy, bashing the Dan Bejar songs. Ballad Of A Comeback Kid is one of the best things they ever did.

I could have sworn I read somewhere that *all* of them play on every song on the album; that Carl Newman wanted to see if they could pull off doing it as a full band album rather than as a "through-the-post" thing. Maybe that was an original intention that didn't come to pass, though - I can't find a link anywhere.

I hope they finally give Neko some fast ones to sing. Inexplicably, they haven't since Electric Version.

she co-leads sing me spanish techno, and that's a fast song.

I want another solo Neko like All For Swinging You Around or Letter From an Occupant

I want an entire album of her singing songs like those.

^^^
otm

i'd be good with that too, but i love most the songs where she harmonizes with ac newman.

well, i'm sure ac newman would love that too, but it's not like great songs like those just happen ... in fact, i'd be willing to bet that he's set the bar so high with those (and a few other Neko rockers) that he's kinda cagy about following them up ...

Or he could admit she's the best singer in the band and let her improve everything by singing lead all of the time.

I like having her pop up on lead just a couple times per record - feels more like an "event." All Neko all the time would be too much of a good thing IMO.

I'd probably mind Bejar less if the timbre of his voice didn't irritate the hell out of me.

Ah, this brings me back to the days when I first heard a Bejar song on an NPs album and thought, "Where'd they find this guy and why are they letting him sing?" Fast-forward a few years and there are now at least two Destroyer albums that I prefer to any of the NP's work.

I'm still in the why do they let him sing camp.

Bejar always brings the laughs on these records. They would be kinda boring lyrically w/o him.

That dude was a drunken mess when I saw him live w/NP.

Bejar also brings the booze.

stage fright
xpost

tylerw summing up how i feel about bejar on the nps records. i like newman's lyrics but bejar is a great change of pace

I'd love some more Neko rockers too... BUT - the title track from the last record is stunning. Neko's performance is refreshingly understated on that song, to excellent effect. That whole album is underrated. I find myself coming back to that one more than Twin Cinema.

hm. well, even on twin cinema, case was doing more understated vocal work, e.g., streets of fire; bones ofa an idol; these are the fables.

True, but "Challengers" is better than those songs, I think.

who's harmonizing with ac newman on failsafe (from challengers)? i think it's the stand-in for neko case, who actually is also a terrific singer and compliments newman's voice well.

sorry -- she isn't a stand-in at this point, she's a permanent member of the band, i think.

I've got to give the last one more of a chance I guess. The only song I really liked on it was Myriad Harbour. Which means for 2 out of their 4 records, my favorite song was a Bejar one.

that was one of my least favorite songs on challengers. i know some people really dug-it, tho.

Kathryn Calder is the other woman in the band. I actually really love "Failsafe" too.

As for the rest of Challengers, "My Rights vs Yours" is such a fantastic song too! The way that song builds is thrilling. And "All of the Things that Go to Make Heaven and Earth" and "All the Old Showstoppers" - both excellent.