Canadian rockers The New Pornographers might have been a big stars in 1979. In that year of power pop glory, the sextet (named for Jimmy Swaggart’s claim that “music is the new pornography”) and their jumpy, hook-laden tunes would have sounded great on the car radio between The Knack and “Pop Musik”. At the Black Cat Sunday night, the group---officially a side project for the members, who play full-time in other Canadian indie rock groups---offered tight renditions of songs from their irresistible album “Mass Romantic”.
Led by guitarist and singer Carl Newman (also in Zumpano) and the soaring vocals of alternative-country starlet Neko Case, the NP’s flooded the speakers with a quivering wall of pop sounds: whirling organ, crunchy guitar hooks and Dan Bejar’s harmonies, which he plied while delivering an insistent, pulse-pounding backbeat. “The Fake Headlines”, “To Wild Homes”, “Letter From An Occupant” and “The Electric Version” keyed the fast-paced, 60 minute show. The band encored by digging into their power pop roots for versions of Nick Lowe’s “Cruel to be Kind” and Sparks’ “Throw Her Away (And Get A New One)”, igniting fits of bad new-wave dancing throughout the crowd. Thankfully, after the visions of dancers with awkwardly splayed limbs disappeared from the brain, the NP’s melodies buzzed happily on.
As enjoyable as the headliner’s turn was, they were actually outdone by a preceding performance from The Frames, a Dublin, Ireland quintet, who were led through a stirring set by charismatic frontman, Glen Hansard. Alternating between whisper-quiet meditations and fiercely scrubbed guitars and violin, songs like “Star Star” and “What Happens When the Heart Just Stops” created a link between Sixties rock, Van Morrison, Nick Drake and melancholy poetry shouted at an empty night sky.
Washington Post, 2002
