Concert review: New Pornographers rock the Mil-Chi bi-state area · Oct 20, 08:52 AM by Don
Chaka emailed me the following report on last night’s New Porngraphers show at the Metro in Chicago:
overall, a better show than the pabst – the band seemed really up for the show. maybe the non-travel day helped. longer set too. i think they did everything they did at the pabst except ‘The Electric Version’, but added five: ‘Jackie’, ‘The Laws Have Changed’, ‘The Bones of an Idol’, ‘From Blown Speakers’, ‘Letter From an Occupant’.
Neko was pissed off for the first couple numbers, complaining of smoke or fog of unknown origin infiltrating the stage. the crowd was good. it was sold out but i’ve been to many Metro show far more packed in than this one. in-between song noodling was even more of an issue than at the Pabst show. at least twice the PA guy started playing music from a CD between songs because the band was late to start the next number.
i guess after three ‘Challengers’ shows i’m safe in saying much of the new material is a little flat. compounding that flatness is the new material’s longer average song length, which makes those downtempo numbers seem especially long when contrasted with their more concise hits. it took me a couple shows for the ‘Twin Cinema’ material to sink in but the ‘Challengers’ stuff just isn’t doing it for me yet. it’ll be interesting to see how this album feels in a couple years. ‘My Rights Versus Yours’ was an odd choice for a stress track. it’s a little overreaching like much of the new material and doesn’t work well live when surrounded by their more explosive successes.
I saw the New Pornographers at the Pabst on Thursday night with Chaka. It was a good show, but I don’t feel like I have to see the band again anytime soon. I’d rather see another Neko Case solo show, who I saw 18 months ago at the Pabst, or a Dan Bejar/Destroyer show. The band is almost too good. Each song is a hermetically sealed wonder of pop perfection, which is fine on record, but live I wouldn’t mind more spontaneity. Bejar helped electrify things a bit when he walked out to join the band for his “Myriad Harbor,” the show, which was going fine, really came to life. I didn’t realize how much I liked that song until I saw it performed live.
Here are two New Pornographers songs I’ll probably never hear live.
mp3: The New Pornographers – Daddy Don’t Know :: Toronto cover from the FUBAR: The Album (2002)
mp3: The New Pornographers – When I Was A Baby :: Donner Party cover from the “Letter from an Occupant” single (2003)
Here’s Pitchfork’s take on When I Was A Baby.
Below are the videos for the 1982 Toronto original and for Neko and company’s version.
The photo at the top of this post was taken by me at last summer’s Pitchfork fest.
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