Electric Version’s subtlety is not overwhelming; it is, well, subtle – from the “through here” and “to the throne” of “The Laws Have Changed” to the vibraslap and tambourine in “July Jones” – many of these instances actually take rather a lot of concentration to discern, at least to someone whose ears bulldoze all minor distinctions into aural oblivion, that is, thanks to my junior high school years of blasting Rollins and Nirvana at ridiculous levels, my hearing’s rather patchy. Electric Version though, is not a subtle album on the whole. Songs have 3, 4, 5 hooks or more; it’s an album of glaringly obvious catchiness – not to it’s detriment, mind you, but that’s the way it stands. And it’s fucking fantastic.
So, when I caught wind of Twin Cinema’s imminently nigh release, I eagerly scoured the P2Ps for a leak –Matador’s one lowly MP3 made me feel a little disappointed; I had hoped that within the context of the album it made more sense – one meager hook, a rather angular vocal melody – these were not the SOPs of a New Pornographers’ song, but let not a contextless judgement stand – if there’s one thing we’ve learned (or should have learned) over the last couple decades it’s that context is everything. As such, “Twin Cinema” is only the prelude, the establishing shot, for an album that reverses the dynamic impact of the last album, while leaving intact the catchiness and the quality.
If subtlety is merely a minor component of Electric Version, then on Twin Cinema it’s writ large – here hooks are reduced in number, relegated to one, maybe two per song in addition to the vocal melody; Newman and Bejar’s songs sound more like their solo output, subdued (“Streets of Fire” especially sounds like something off of Streethawk: A Seduction), rather than New Pornographers songs, but it isn’t merely Neko Case’s backing vocals or the surfeit of harmonies that set this apart – the album as a coherent whole is what makes it a New Pornographers album. Hegel, in writing The Phenomenology of Spirit, noted the holistic nature of his work, that only when it was complete could one understand it, that is, there were no foundational axioms or basic principles to guide one through the work, and here we have the same idea of wholeness in play. Individually, each song seems rather incomplete, but en masse the force of The New Pornographers is in full swing, resulting in an album that is every bit as powerful as Electric Version, if in the end, simply different.
The album begins with "Twin Cinema", seemingly a track that bridges the gap between Electric Version and the new album, the song sounding like a strange hybrid, of the older, blunter New Pornographers and the newer one, a band more concerned with a desolate aesthetic; as I noted before, the strategy here is one of austerity: rather than hit you over the head with the songs, there is a preference for modesty. The album from this point on works through this strategy - even on "Sing Me Spanish Techno" or "Broken Beads", songs one might use to say "Look they're still the same" - to this I reply, "But listen to the songs...don't mistake tempo for teeth, my friend!" And where once we ended on "Miss Teen Wordpower" with the celebratory momentum of "Nobody knows the wreck of the soul the way you do", here instead the pace of "Stacked Crooked" belies the baleful failure of the protagonist.
