New New Pornographers

The person who alerted me to the fact that the entirety of The New Pornographers' forthcoming album Challengers is now streaming on their MySpace page was worried that he was the last one in the universe to know. Well, now I'm worried I'm the last to know, so I'm telling you, my readers, since probably some of you don't know (probably many of you hate the band) and now you're the last to know. After one listen, I think they've managed to make it more middling than any of their previous efforts. Mass Romantic, Electric Version, and Twin Cinemas all feature brilliant tracks and some that I find pretty annoying. Nothing on Challengers annoyed me. But nothing thrilled me the way "The Laws Have Changes," "Mass Romantic," "Miss Teen Wordpower," "All for Swinging Your Around," "Twin Cinema," or "Jackie Dressed in Cobras" does. We'll see, though, how I feel after repeat listens.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2007/08/new-new-pornographers/45833/