They are one of only a few artists or bands
that jump-started their career during
the 21st century whose entire catalog
has found its way into my CD and vinyl
collection. Despite their most unfortunate
band name, these Canadians have made
ten studio albums over the last 26 years,
all of which are tremendously good.
A kind of Vancouver B.C. supergroup,
many of these cats were successful in
their own right before the first album
Mass Romantic came out in 2001. Neko
Case, in on it from the beginning,
Dan Bejar of Destroyer, and the principal
songwriter and lead singer on 70% of
the band’s tunes, A.C. Newman,
come together to make a kind of punk
power pop songwriting masterclass.
Their first album is noisy, rowdy, but full of the
tremendously hook-laden melodies
all three of these writers are famous for.
A kind of 21st century Canadian XTC,
their catalog follows a similar trajectory, as
each record from the debut sounds better,
gets sonically more sophisticated, more
tuneful, more precisely performed and
produced. Brill Bruisers is a masterful pop
album, melodically hooky, lyrically weird,
and Dan Bejar’s contribution to this one
makes for some of my all time favorite tunes
from the band. I’ve seen The New
Pornographers twice live, only once
when Dan Bejar was on tour with them–
and his presence in that show was enigmatic
and strange, like everything that guy does.
He’d only come on stage to perform his songs,
so when he wasn’t singing, he was off stage
entirely, invisible, more of a guest star than
part of a band. It’s one of the beauties of this
group, to have so many talented contributors
so that the touring band can be somewhat
malleable and the show doesn’t suffer.
Sometimes Neko Case is there and sometimes
she’s not. Dan Bejar is sometimes there and
sometimes he’s not. These days, mostly not.
I think Whiteout Conditions may be
the first album not to include any Bejar songs
and I don’t think he has returned to the
studio since, keeping plenty busy, I assume,
with his Destroyer project. I miss him on
these records, but the albums don’t really
suffer in his absence, providing more
space for A.C. Newman’s absurdist pop
sensibilities and shared lead vocals with
a couple of stellar female vocalists, Neko
and Kathryn Calder. I’m going to claim that
there are no bad albums by The New
Pornographers. If they suffer from anything,
it is a kind of consistency of sound and
style that makes most of their catalog
feel like one gigantic never-ending album.
Unlike XTC, a band that often reinvented
itself sonically while maintaining their core
allegiance to great pop music, TNP is more
steady, albeit Bejar’s absence, and the fact
that as they get older, on their last two
albums, they tend to be less rowdy,
less bombastic, more reflective, which
lands me finally on their last, most recent
record, The Former Site of The New Pornographers.
Some CD’s in my collection might be the
all time favorites from this outstanding group,
but of all the vinyl I have from the band,
Brill Bruisers and this 2026 outing are my
favorites, representing two brilliant sides
of the same coin: the exuberant power pop
on the former, the almost meditative and
melancholy melody-centric of the latter.
The New Pornographers are a great band.
I imagine that there will never be a new
album of theirs that I don’t end up taking home.
Notes on the vinyl editions:
- Mass Romantic, Matador Records, 2001 (2023 anniversary edition), semi-translucent red vinyl.
- Brill Bruisers, Matador Records, 2014, white vinyl with orange, red, purple, blue splatter.
- Whiteout Conditions, Concord Records, 2017, white vinyl.
- Continue As Guest, Merge Records, 2023, translucent baby blue vinyl with big green splotch.
- The Former Site Of, Merge Records, 2026, opaque orange marble vinyl.
In case you don’t already know: I’m listening to almost everything in my vinyl collection, A to Z, and writing at least one, sometimes two or three long skinny poem-like-things in response for each artist, and on a few occasions, writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response to more than one artist. As a poet and a student of poetry, I understand that these things look like poems, but they don’t really sound much like poetry, hence, I call them “poem-like-things.” I’ll admit that they’re just long, skinny essays that veer every now and then into the poetic or lyric.
michael jarmer 