Reminded by their "Hey, Snow White" on the Dark Was The Night set of how great the New Pornographers can be, I went looking for a reasonably priced copy of Mass Romantic the other day to finally listen to it; I didn't have any luck, but did come across their two most recent, Twin Cinema and Challengers, and picked them up instead. I haven't really listened to the latter of those yet, but hey, guess what? Twin Cinema is excellent!
The ones that I've particularly got my teeth into so far tend to be the ones on which Neko Case features prominently - something which she seems to do more frequently on this record than on Electric Version - and "The Bones of an Idol" and "The Bleeding Heart Show" are my current favourites. The latter, in particular, is absolutely vintage New Pornographers, up there with the title tracks from their first two records, "Letter from an Occupant", "From Blown Speakers", "The Laws Have Changed" and (my particular favourite) "Testament to Youth In Verse" as one of their bulletproof best moments. When they hit their straps, which is frequently, there's something gloriously barnstorming, roof-raising, about their take on modern power-pop, and they're very hard to beat.
