If the title of the newest album from The New Pornographers is any indication, the Canadian indie-pop troupe presented themselves with a daunting task during the album's creation: Try to create an album that presents as much lyrical depth and instrumental mastery as their 2005 album Twin Cinema, a collection of songs so critically lauded it launched The New Pornographers into what can best be described as indie-pop superstardom.
Challengers, the supergroup's latest release from Matador Records, however, fails to meet this lofty goal.
As a whole, the album is dark and subdued in its delivery, a far departure from the troupe's normal carnival-pop-meets-gospel-choir style. And as a whole, the Pornographers crash and burn in this new venture. With a plodding beat and tired harmonies, album opener "My Rights Versus Yours" simply begs for a higher setting on the metronome, while title track Challengers offers little else save for an enjoyable, cascading chorus of na-na-na's. The Pornographers sped up the tempo on "Go Places," but the lyrics and vocals aren't enough to keep the track afloat during the instrument-free intro.
Redemption, however, comes in the form of the piano and orchestra pop ballad "Adventures in Solitude." Painfully sweet and endearing, the track presents some of the album's best instrumentation. As Carl Newman and Kathryn Calder's vocals bleed longing and sorrow, an orchestra swells to the height of emotion and subsides into gentle bursts of acoustic guitar. In the end, "Adventures in Solitude" is a bittersweet surprise, beautifully combining the artists' emotion with instrumental mastery.
But perhaps the largest surprise is that, though the majority of the album's tracks are penned by Pornographers frontman and founder Carl (A.C.) Newman of Zumpano and Superconductor fame, no real thread exists that binds one of Challengers' tracks to the next except for the painfully somber tone. Instead, the album plays as though a different artist wrote each track. The exploding psychedelia of middle-of-the-road tune "All the Things That Go to Make Heaven and Earth" finds no transition into "Failsafe," a track full of painfully mixed and pounding reverb.
More surprising than Newman's shortcomings, however, is group member Dan Bejar's praiseworthy artistic presence on Challengers. Of the album's 12 tracks, Bejar pens only three. Although they don't blend with Newman's somber, tired tunes, they are the album's lyrical, vocal and instrumental best. "Entering White Cecilia," a song both ambient in sound and surfer in feel, features Bejar's jubilant proclamation of "Who cares?" while a charming chorus of "la-la's" and twangy acoustic guitar lend a sense of ease to an album overloaded with dark themes and overwhelming orchestras.
Even with Bejar's help, The New Pornographers' latest is a chore, not only for the Challengers' creators, but also for its listeners. Its solemn tone and general incoherence make the album difficult to digest, making it glaringly obvious that The New Pornographers' latest will never be the success Twin Cinema was.
2 out of 5 stars
