My favorite band, with the unfortunate name
“I saw the Japanese movie The Pornographers and I thought it was an interesting word. On the first Destroyer record, Dan has a song “the Pornographers.” I remember wanting to put the word new in front of something like “the new sneakers of the new Christy Minstrels.” I always thought that bands that put new in front of their name was somehow kind of modern in a false way. Like do you really have to call yourself the new? Does it really have to be illustrated by those words.’ So I like the words “the pornographers,” and “The New Pornographers” just fell together. I don’t know, I can’t tell if it’s a bad name or shitty name.”
-Carl Newman
Last year, one of my students asked me what my favorite band was. Always honest, but unwilling to explain to a rectitudinous adolescent who had told me before that his career goal was to become a bishop in the Catholic church how liking this band didn't make me a pervert of some kind, I simply replied, "I have lots of favorite bands." True enough, but I think the New Pornographers have the best claim to the title.
I first heard them from my friend Josh in Gainesville. When he heard that I liked Neko Case, he was a bit surprised. He asked to borrow my CD, since she was also in this other group he liked. Furnace Room Lullaby was a bit too country and gothic for his tastes, but when he returned my CD to me, he also included a tape with Holopaw (and two Kossoy Sisters songs) on one side and Mass Romantic on the other. Driving around Gainesville, I ran that tape through my stereo obsessively. I eventually got a burned copy of the CD from littlevisigoth along with The Electric Version, but it was mainly all about that tape for the longest time. I didn't really get into The Electric Version at all, really, until I found a used copy of Twin Cinema and took it with me to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. The long drive across southern Illinois gave me plenty of time to become obsessed with it, and when I got back home, I started listening to all three of the albums, and soon adding The Slow Wonder, in endless shuffles on my CD player at home. panoramicgreen also got into them, and so when we were in town for her dad's wedding, we bought Challengers to listen to in our rental car. All five of these albums (the four New Pornographers, plus the A.C. Newman solo album) were ripped onto my new Apple desktop the day I got it, and have been perpetual iPod fodder as soon as I started transitioning to digital music. I have since gotten Get Guilty and Together, and they are slowly working their way into my consciousness.
I was thinking of this, because I was getting a bit glum, staying home all day from work by myself, until I put on my New Pornographers playlist, and suddenly I had some life and energy in me.
I saw the video for Arcade Fire's "Suburbia" today (online, of course), and while I liked it, I don't have any real impulse to buy the album, or even the song. The Decembrists have released at least one album I haven't even bothered to hear. Descriptions of Sufjan Stevens' latest stuff, too, despite how much I love Come On, Feel the Illinoise!, haven't even moved me to listen to clips. In ability to hurl me into an acquisitive fit, the only competition the New Pornographers have is with Neko Case herself, and Spoon.
Anyway, that was a long ramble, for what I had originally envisioned as a "Here's five New Pornographers songs and where I first remember hearing them" list:
"Adventures in Solitude" - panoramicgreen and I were on our way to the Melting Pot in University City, to have a nice dinner together the weekend of her dad's wedding, and I played for her the three songs from the new album that most appealed to me. I think we listened to "Adventures in Solitude" three times on the way from our hotel downtown to the U-City Loop and then on the ride back, but I think of it with the lights of the Loop, on a cold autumn night. ["We thought we lost you./ Welcome back."]
"Streets of Fire" - I think it was Veteran's Day weekend, so the hills of Southern Illinois were still bright with color. I had left straight from L'Ouverture's parent conferences, and it felt so liberating, with a brand-new (to me) album of perfect pop gems, each arriving as an off-kilter surprising blast. When I saw the title of this song, I remember thinking of Michael Pare in that cheesy movie, dueling to the death in the streets with sledgehammers. ["This whiskey priest,/ he burned the church to keep his girls alive."]
"The Slow Descent Into Alcoholism" - Oddly enough, while I can't remember when I first heard this song, I associate it with driving over some dimly remembered bridge over some creek in Alachua County. It's just a little smartass song with a singalong chorus about becoming a drunkard. ["I said my/ ever-loosening grip/ on the commonest courtesy slipped/ from my hands/ where I really need her."]
"From Blown Speakers" - Again, in this case since I had this album for probably over a year before it really made much of an impression on me, I am not really sure when I first heard it, but I associate hearing it with some time when I was driving past the Peabody Houses in St. Louis. I think it's something about the grand power pop-ness of it, that I associate most of their songs with driving. ["It came out magical, out from blown speakers."]
"The Bleeding Heart Show" - This is the song that, while I clearly heard it many, many times in the car, I associate it with hearing it on my iPod Shuffle one gloomy morning, on the way into work from Washington Heights, walking up Wallace Avenue from Pelham Parkway in the dark. It came on in a random playlist, and exploded in my mind like aural fireworks. In the movie version of my life, it created (or at least was the soundtrack for) some kind of seismic shift in attitude and outlook on a rough work week, but I honestly only have that disassociated memory, and for all I know I did just go on and have a crappy day. ["I leapt across three or four beds into your arms."]
-Carl Newman
Last year, one of my students asked me what my favorite band was. Always honest, but unwilling to explain to a rectitudinous adolescent who had told me before that his career goal was to become a bishop in the Catholic church how liking this band didn't make me a pervert of some kind, I simply replied, "I have lots of favorite bands." True enough, but I think the New Pornographers have the best claim to the title.
I first heard them from my friend Josh in Gainesville. When he heard that I liked Neko Case, he was a bit surprised. He asked to borrow my CD, since she was also in this other group he liked. Furnace Room Lullaby was a bit too country and gothic for his tastes, but when he returned my CD to me, he also included a tape with Holopaw (and two Kossoy Sisters songs) on one side and Mass Romantic on the other. Driving around Gainesville, I ran that tape through my stereo obsessively. I eventually got a burned copy of the CD from littlevisigoth along with The Electric Version, but it was mainly all about that tape for the longest time. I didn't really get into The Electric Version at all, really, until I found a used copy of Twin Cinema and took it with me to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. The long drive across southern Illinois gave me plenty of time to become obsessed with it, and when I got back home, I started listening to all three of the albums, and soon adding The Slow Wonder, in endless shuffles on my CD player at home. panoramicgreen also got into them, and so when we were in town for her dad's wedding, we bought Challengers to listen to in our rental car. All five of these albums (the four New Pornographers, plus the A.C. Newman solo album) were ripped onto my new Apple desktop the day I got it, and have been perpetual iPod fodder as soon as I started transitioning to digital music. I have since gotten Get Guilty and Together, and they are slowly working their way into my consciousness.
I was thinking of this, because I was getting a bit glum, staying home all day from work by myself, until I put on my New Pornographers playlist, and suddenly I had some life and energy in me.
I saw the video for Arcade Fire's "Suburbia" today (online, of course), and while I liked it, I don't have any real impulse to buy the album, or even the song. The Decembrists have released at least one album I haven't even bothered to hear. Descriptions of Sufjan Stevens' latest stuff, too, despite how much I love Come On, Feel the Illinoise!, haven't even moved me to listen to clips. In ability to hurl me into an acquisitive fit, the only competition the New Pornographers have is with Neko Case herself, and Spoon.
Anyway, that was a long ramble, for what I had originally envisioned as a "Here's five New Pornographers songs and where I first remember hearing them" list:
"Adventures in Solitude" - panoramicgreen and I were on our way to the Melting Pot in University City, to have a nice dinner together the weekend of her dad's wedding, and I played for her the three songs from the new album that most appealed to me. I think we listened to "Adventures in Solitude" three times on the way from our hotel downtown to the U-City Loop and then on the ride back, but I think of it with the lights of the Loop, on a cold autumn night. ["We thought we lost you./ Welcome back."]
"Streets of Fire" - I think it was Veteran's Day weekend, so the hills of Southern Illinois were still bright with color. I had left straight from L'Ouverture's parent conferences, and it felt so liberating, with a brand-new (to me) album of perfect pop gems, each arriving as an off-kilter surprising blast. When I saw the title of this song, I remember thinking of Michael Pare in that cheesy movie, dueling to the death in the streets with sledgehammers. ["This whiskey priest,/ he burned the church to keep his girls alive."]
"The Slow Descent Into Alcoholism" - Oddly enough, while I can't remember when I first heard this song, I associate it with driving over some dimly remembered bridge over some creek in Alachua County. It's just a little smartass song with a singalong chorus about becoming a drunkard. ["I said my/ ever-loosening grip/ on the commonest courtesy slipped/ from my hands/ where I really need her."]
"From Blown Speakers" - Again, in this case since I had this album for probably over a year before it really made much of an impression on me, I am not really sure when I first heard it, but I associate hearing it with some time when I was driving past the Peabody Houses in St. Louis. I think it's something about the grand power pop-ness of it, that I associate most of their songs with driving. ["It came out magical, out from blown speakers."]
"The Bleeding Heart Show" - This is the song that, while I clearly heard it many, many times in the car, I associate it with hearing it on my iPod Shuffle one gloomy morning, on the way into work from Washington Heights, walking up Wallace Avenue from Pelham Parkway in the dark. It came on in a random playlist, and exploded in my mind like aural fireworks. In the movie version of my life, it created (or at least was the soundtrack for) some kind of seismic shift in attitude and outlook on a rough work week, but I honestly only have that disassociated memory, and for all I know I did just go on and have a crappy day. ["I leapt across three or four beds into your arms."]