(Matador)
RECOMMENDED
It was hard to appreciate this album at the time; it got lost in one of the best music years of the 2000s, for one, and it's also a completely unexpected, even odd turnaround in style and preoccupation for one of the premier indie-level pop groups of the day. Trudging through the release, the only orthodox New Pornographers moment is "Mutiny, I Promise You," a throwback showpiece in the style of "From Blown Speakers" that ends up sounding crazily out of place. The stage is better set by the gently melodic opener, "My Rights Versus Yours"; it's an airy, floaty evocation of something on A.C. Newman's mind in a Shins-like setting, opening starkly before flowing into a bed of lovely all-star harmony and lushness. It's as addictive and sweeping as ever, but dark -- its ambitions beyond the simple fixations upon pop radio mutation of Twin Cinema. You might call it, gulp, progressive ("Unguided" answers this stray thought later in the affirmative); this is tricky, sometimes cringeworthy territory for a band that had released three fairly masterful albums in unpretentious, hyperkinetic power pop format with intimate audience connection and a feeling of genuine unfettered joy. But three albums is a lot, and where do you go after that?
We can't fully answer that yet. While Newman and company haven't really shown any inclination to take the New Porns any farther in this direction than Challengers, it does seem the beginning of one trend: like the subsequent Together, it's a series of almost peerless if disconnected songs that sound far better on their own than as part of the group. In this guise the NPs can join fellow semi-power pop titans the Cars, whose albums were generally unwavering in intensity and weirdness but are hard to take in a sitting. You really have to pull something like "Myriad Harbor" apart from its surroundings to appreciate how it's nearly bursting with creative energy and teasing joy, the kind of musical solace a teenager longs for and seeks forever after. It's Dan Bejar dropping by the Brill Building, but while it finds him putting his bandmates in this side-project-for-him to better use than ever, in contrast to his contributions on previous records, it doesn't seem to have much to do with whatever Newman's on about, and it gets lost in the shuffle.
That shuffle, as it happens, is craftier than ever, but the roll call of intricately written songs that sparkle with detail and precision ends up coming across as a mess, almost hard to really take in. What's weirdly reassuring is the band's newfound willingness to sound non-superhuman; they're cutting loose here and letting out some oddball selections that would have brought Electric Version down, but serve only to warm up Challengers; "Failsafe" reminds me of one-hit band Snake River Conspiracy's cover of "How Soon Is Now" with its echoy melodic wall of sound and a "you and me both, kid" chorus that -- Yaz suggestion notwithstanding -- touches the same inexplicable sweet spot as "Myriad Harbor." Throughout the record, the vocals (especially by Neko Case and Kathryn Calder) seem like the biggest draw, unceasing in their enthusiasm and conviction even against Newman's muddy new musical backdrops.
It's not a matter of Challengers subverting the band's prior reaches for perfection, which had almost been a theme of their work. The change is primarily that more than ever before, these pop smarts are held back by a sense of melancholy and even melodrama. It's not always, frankly, the best fit for Newman's talents -- it seems like a good idea but there's a touch of the self-consciously obtuse and standoffish. When it works, though, it absolutely soars. The centerpieces of Challengers and the two songs that absolutely succeed have the combination of Spectorian grandiosity and elegant simplicity in chords and melody that once made suburban adolescents fall for U2 and (these days) Arcade Fire. "Challengers" is a towering love song, Newman and Case trading lines about a love affair put on hold, in a minimal fashion that lets it manage to come across as a something of a hymn. It doesn't build to some splendid breaking point, it sticks with tension and, going along with its themes of responsibility and duty and paying one's debt, is stoic in its perverse romanticism. It's nearly bettered, even, by the Case and Calder-centric "Go Places," a gigantic and glorious tune that does burst into the kind of irresistible chorus so familiar from earlier New Pornographers records -- but never before elevated to this kind of Paul Westerberg hunger and urgency.
Urgency, it seems, is really the theme of Challengers -- Newman's always functioned at breakneck capacity, but on those two cuts his themes match his musical ideas, conjuring up the moments when an emotional desire seems to take on all-consuming importance, the militaristic sense of what must be. The mismatch is the cursed musical maturity, because Newman thrives on immaturity. As much as these songs reveal themselves with time, the indie-rock adult contemporary that much of Challengers embodies, as would the next record, seems an ill fit and an under-utilization of this band's talents. "Adventures in Solitude" is a fine song but it's easy listening navel gaze the way Newman arranges it; irresistible as it is, "All the Old Showstoppers" finds the band aping '70s AM the way they used to vaguely suggest "She Loves You" or "Glad All Over"; even Dan Bejar joins in the sap pile with "The Spirit of Giving." But when you hear the traditional bashed-out NP rocker, "All the Things That Go to Make Heaven and Earth," and sense the generically tired film that covers it, you know the truth: bandleader Newman was simply aware that this project needed a new direction. As of 2010, he was still working on finding it -- but at least in the process he's added a plethora of outstanding new songs to the canon.
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