MASS ROMANTIC

aw hell
that didn't work at all

Lol apologies for drunky over enthusiasm last night everybody

"Slow Descent" over "Letter"

needed to relisten to this start to finish for the first time in years to make an informed choice and I gotta say it hasn’t help narrow my decision at all

it’s amazing how all these songs exist in my head as a jumble of nonsense syllables. plenty of evocative imagery but as far as i glean any meaning from them, it might as well be in farsi

Me too. Maybe for that reason, I find that I have a hard time remembering which of these songs is which. I like them all, but they kind of blur together into one song in my mind. (Except Slow Descent, and maybe Fake Headlines as well.)

Ha, did the same thing, will, and then just voted for one of the ones I was going to vote for anyway

xp yeah I find myself mixing and matching verses and choruses in my head. they all work pretty well next to each other.

I kind of stopped learning song titles and listening closely to lyrics for a few decades but recently those activities have made a comeback.

I still remember all these lyrics after not listening to this record for 15+ years. Clearly was very influenced by the way these lyrics work, same with Destroyer, whom I am also binging on right now.

James Redd, I also don't know the names of any songs, it's a practice I've totally let go. I can identify artists and sing along with lyrics when tracks have them.

i'm doing some recipe testing for a friend who is working on a cookbook, and tonight's project involved testing a stronger-than-i-would-make rum and bourbon punch (there is a legitimate reason why, but explaining it would give away the premise of the book). so tonight's dinner prep was a full run through mass romantic plus this punch recipe and man, it was a pretty good time. i like almost all of the NPs albums but they never did a pure front to back dopamine rush like this again.

“front to back dopamine rush” otm, few albums by any artists are aimed as directly at the pleasure center of the brain

Yeah I just listened to it twice in a row, after skipping around the past few days. It's an incredible record, almost wish I could change my vote to 'Fake Headlines.'

Are there any tracks we think won't get any votes, or which will get the fewest? Breakin' the Law?

bottom three will be Breakin' the Law (zero votes), Execution Day (zero) and Mystery Hours (one)

Good calls.

voted for body cause IIII NEEDED HER TO

it’s amazing how all these songs exist in my head as a jumble of nonsense syllables. plenty of evocative imagery but as far as i glean any meaning from them, it might as well be in farsi

Me too -- this for me has never been a band where I think hard about the lyrics or even generally know what they are, it's about the syllables and the sounds. I would be mildly disappointed if I ever found out any of the songs were about anything.

torn between ensuring “mass romantic” charts and not splitting the “slow descent” vote. let’s try this on and see how it fits

THIS BOY’S LIFE
AMONG THE ELECTRICALLLL LIGHTS
THIS BOY’S LIFE
AMONG THE ELECTRICALLLL LIGHTS

hmm yeah may be “slow descent”

Regarding the lyrics, it might be helpful to note that an experimental school of poetry was very influential in Vancouver at the time, and oftentimes the lyrics have some resonances with that more literary movement.

yeah the lyrics & phrasing have often been a stumbling block for me with them - newmans writing often feels like a complete avalanche of syllables. I'm trying to keep up and parse the crazy imagery, meanwhile the band is mashing away at max intensity... when it hits it HITS, but other times wish i could do a fan remix where I could just mute every other line or something, just to put some space in there

i'm doing some recipe testing for a friend who is working on a cookbook, and tonight's project involved testing a stronger-than-i-would-make rum and bourbon punch

weirdly, last night i was also taste-testing rum drinks out of a weird recipe book while cranking this album!

and when you see the bruises on my legs from kicking pills yeah
then you see how recklessly the pages are filled!!!!!

MAKE HEADLINES
BELIEVE THEM
COME BACK

VISUALIZE SUCCESS

but don't believe your eyes
what's a version of the world
without the will to despise it

i like newman's lyrics a lot but i always thought he had the unenviable job of being on the same records as dan bejar

all right more hot takes: the first four new pornos records are basically all as good as each other, but electric version > mass romantic

opening verse of "chump change" is like the peak of music and lyrics 4 me

all right more hot takes: the first four new pornos records are basically all as good as each other, but electric version > mass romantic

the first four new pornos records are basically all as good as each other, but electric version > mass romantic

I agree w this take and love that it includes Challengers

i like-to-love all of bejar's songs on mass romantic but he suddenly becomes the best member of the band on electric version and i think this is what sends it over for me

i love every line on "ballad of a comeback kid" as if it were my own child

if we polled Bejar’s NP songs Myriad Harbor might take it for me

i think most of us would go for myriad harbor, it's kind of perfect

IT CAME OUT MAGICAL, OUT FROM BLOWN SPEAKERS
IT CAME OUT MAGICAL, OUT FROM BLOWN SPEAKERS

"from blown speakers" is maybe my favorite newman song ever

"Slow Descent"'s verses are A+ but the chorus/refrain fall flat (as illuminated in drunkposts above). Feel like AC could have spent a little more time on that one.

genuinely adore how much this band sucks at album covers

Lol, not quite Beautiful South level but yeah.

blown speakers is my fave by a wide margin, so good

sadly otm re album covers as well, really the worst

always kinda wish the New Pornos had done a remake of Superconductor's "There Goes Helen"

When I caught Superconductor live and they had 8 or 9 guitars iirc. I wonder if there's vids on the 'tube.

guitarists*

i think most of us would go for myriad harbor, it's kind of perfect

bottom three will be Breakin' the Law (zero votes), Execution Day (zero) and Mystery Hours (one)

i nearly voted for 'mystery hours', i love its OTT-ness

well now I wish I voted for execution day

As I suggested above, Game Theory's Big Shot Chronicles and Lolita Nation were a big melodic/harmonic influence on Newman, but Scott Miller could write similarly complex lyrics that were a lot more lucid than Newman was at this stage.

The New Pornographers' cover of "Breakin' The Law" is pretty underrated ITT. Not sure if many people ever heard the original:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G_oTSGod60

"Mystery Hours" definitely my least-favorite. Not sure with what I'll go end up going with. "Letter" is still in the running, even for a notorious underdog booster like myself.

Kind of want to give The Mary Martin Show a vote - by the time it comes on I should be exhausted by this album but it's such a blast before the comedown of Breakin the Law.