We Don’t Deserve The New Pornographers

I wrote this about the New Pornog­ra­phers in 2017. It still holds up. Their new record is fab­u­lous. You should lis­ten to it if you haven’t already! I’m still wrestling with why I ever took a break from them in the first place.

A big part of why I tuned out on the New Pornog­ra­phers was around the time “Chal­lengers” was released. It got a 6.0 from Pitch­fork and my mem­o­ry of that album at the time was just that it lacked the unsus­tain­able punch of their ear­li­er records. Carl talked to Tom Scharpling about this right before he released “Shut Down the Streets” and it was deeply affect­ing for all the rea­sons you can imagine.

Going to mock the Pitch­fork review of Chal­lengers for a bit, if you’ll allow me this.… haven’t read it since it ran all those years ago.…

— @ACNewman (@ACNewman) Sep­tem­ber 27, 2019

Carl revived that thread with a series of tweets. and it’s kind of delight­ful through the wincing.

Flash for­ward and the band is tour­ing and doing press on their new record, “In the Morse Code of the Brake Lights.” New­man has been curat­ing amaz­ing pow­er pop on Twit­ter and shar­ing gems like this cov­er of a brand new GBV song in case you won­dered why we real­ly don’t deserve a band this good.

Indie leg­ends cov­er indie leg­ends. 🎸Watch @TheNewPornos per­form “The Ral­ly Boys” by @_GuidedByVoices’ live for @siriusxmu. Lis­ten to the full ses­sion 11/6 at 9pm ET: https://t.co/VB2TNuHCdO pic.twitter.com/aQLp0SQ2Gd

— Sir­iusXM (@SIRIUSXM) Novem­ber 6, 2019

Spend some time with their new album and their cat­a­log now that it’s get­ting cold­er and you’re stuck indoors.