Customer Reviews

Electric Version

5 star:		(59)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This CD rocks right from the moment you put it into your CD player to the moment you take it out (that is if you ever want to take it out, I sure don't want to quite yet). Top-notch songwriting infused with 70's rock/new wave, layers of sweet crunchy guitar, and very distinctive vocal harmonies. Mmmm. Neko Case is a highlight on this record, as always she's fantastic. They're just one fantastic band, certainly a bright spot in the world of pop music today. This album should be blasted out of car windows on a summer day.

This is the album that I have most eagerly awaited for the past 2 years. Invariably when such an album has come out, I have been sadly disappointed, not necessary because the album is bad, but because my expectations were way to high. When I first heard "The Laws Have Changed", I didn't know what to think, it sounded as though Neko knew the words to the song before she sang them this time. I thought maybe this one will be too polished like Elvis Costello's "Punch the Clock". But then I heard the rest of the album. While the production is much better than "Mass Romantic", the edge is still there. In many ways the songs sound more urgent than the previous release. Unlike "Romantic" they also slow it down for a couple of songs, and like just about everything else they are successful doing so. My fav on the record "From Blown Speakers" was one where they took it down a notch. Dan Bejar, while no longer a New Pornographer so that he can focus completely on Destroyer, is still at least a FONP (friend of), writes and does lead vocals on three of songs ("Chump Change", "Testament to Youth in Verse", and "Ballad of A Comeback Kid" they make you wish that these guys didn't have so much talent so they would be forced to work together all the time. "Testament" ends with a one word five part harmony that is just amazing. Brian Wilson, Phil Spector be warned a new generation of studio geniuses has arrived.

I'm a Neko Case fan, so when I heard about this side project she was in I had to take a chance. Let me tell you, I'm sure glad I did. Electric Version is a far cry from Neko's alt. country solo albums, which makes it that much more enjoyable and surprising. As soon as you pop this baby in your CD player you are hooked, and it probaly wont come out for a long long time. This is pop music the way it was supposed to be! catchy songs, goofy lyrics, and a killer back beat that gets you instantly hooked. Because the band has three different singers, it keeps each song fresh and new. Neko Case's voice is like a stream roller, it just takes over (even when she is just singing back-up vocals). I highly recomend this album with standout songs like "the laws have changed," "miss teen wordpower," and "july jones." I saw the New Pornographers live last week and I have to say...as good as they are on the album, they are 10 times better live! check them out and you wont be sorry!

Not as intense or quirky as their debut, Mass Romantic, Electric Version is a more consistent, fuller sounding, and possibly better version of the New Pornographers. As before, the NPs technique is to use a quadrazillion instruments to layer bouncy rhythm track on top of bouncy rhythm track (the drummer is the closest thing to a lead instrument in this band) beneath insanely catchy melodies (lots of 'em butt-end to butt-end in a subway car) that are wrapped in slightly straining, often sweet, sometimes falsetto harmonies.

What results is something that sounds like simple bubblegum pop from the 60s and 80s....except that it is not simple at all. It's all shimmery brightness on the surface, and dense complexity underneath, with facets that catch the light in different ways. Or maybe it's elegant simplicity on top of blatantly over-the-top production. Whatever! Crazy thing is it works...In Carl Newman's ever busy hands the complexity serves the ebullient feel of the music well, providing a million ways to start and stop momentum, or accent little sections of songs, or just to throw the whole lot into the sea, as at the end of Testament to a Life in Verse when a jaunty call to rebellion against pop mainstreaming is transformed suddenly into a layered, resoundingly beautiful, ringing crescendo of "no, no, no" that could have fallen out of Abbey Road.

The lyrics complicate things further, never quite revealing their explicit meaning while suggesting a combination of satire, dissappointment, and frustration that makes all that musical ebullience sound oddly like a rebel cry. As a result the songs are certainly not simply "sugary goodness," as many have said. Rather they often contain something more akin to angry sarcasm --like on the Laws Have Changed in which Neko wails "Introducing for the first time/ pharoah on the microphone" followed in the next stanza by "Pharoah, all your methods have taught me, is to separate my love from bone." (I don't know exactly what that means, but it feels real wrong.) There's always this tension between the music and the lyrics, between loving this music (as the band clearly does) and questioning the very culture that spawned it and which feeds off it.

So NP concerts are filled with people (me included) screaming madly along with lyrics they barely understand. Carl Newman probably finds this at once funny, and yet oddly perfect. Is pop music really about explicit meaning anyway? Or is it really about feeling and expression? Why should we tell people how to be? Maybe that pop's problem, the problem with all popular culture? Is that why we always get fooled, why we get used so in the end? So many questions...what is there for a sensitive thinking person to do but find release in the the thing itself, the music, with full-throated passion and a wiggle. It's so easy with Newman conducting his manic orchestra and Neko's wail calling you home. That must be the answer.

Or is it? Hmmm...

Well, one thing's certain. Electric Version = Great album.

The second album by the greatest band ever to hail from Vancouver is another winner. I have no idea why they aren't among the biggest names in music. They are well known, but they should be huge. Every song on the disc just ripples with talent and musical intelligence. This is without question some of the most energetic, brilliant, and passionate music in indie rock.

All of the members of the band are involved in other musical projects or have solo careers of their own (co-lead vocalist Neko Case, for instance, here in Chicago, where she has moved). Perhaps because of that or perhaps because they refuse to release anything that isn't utterly outstanding, they have managed to release only three albums in their eight years of existence. But though their releases are few, they make up for it by being close to perfect. There truly is not a bad cut on this album. Even the weakest cuts have numerous interesting moments, while the strongest cuts are so great they can send bolts of joy through your system. When you hear a song like "The Laws Have Changed" you can easily convince yourself that you haven't heard many better songs in your life. And then when you hear "It's Only Divine Right" you know it can't be true since it is at least as good.

This is a tight, tight band and every song bristles with wonderful musical touches. Because all the members are such seasoned professionals, they obviously know how to add just the right touch to properly embellish a song without weighing it down. And everyone in the band is so outstanding at what they do it is hard to single a single member out for praise. Nonetheless, I have to hand out kudos to two members. Carl Newman, more or less the leader of the band, has on all their albums managed to generate a fabulous set of songs. However, I wish he would give up singing lead on so many songs. Why? Because Neko Case is just a stunning vocalist. Every time she takes over the lead vocals I get a bit of a charge running down my spine. She has a marvelously nonchalant nasal voice and just seems to toss the lyrics almost without effort, as opposed to Newman, who while competent always seems to be working. Perhaps it is Case's non-Vancouver residence that keeps her from assuming more of the vocals, but if she were to do all the singing, this band would be almost impossibly great.

The great news for anyone who loves this album is that the band has two other albums that are at least as good as this one, perhaps even better. All three are must-own albums. So if you don't know these guys, go out immediately and get familiar with them. They are easily one of the best bands in the world.

I could play amateur rock critic here, and talk about how the New Pornographers have outdone themselves yet again, producing a power-pop jewel with perhaps even more facets than their first outing, incorporating new influences (The Police, The Jayhawks) in their canon while keeping hold of their own unique sound.

Instead, I'll just tell a story. I bought this CD on a Thursday, and played it at work a few times that day and the next. On Monday one of my co-workers, who'd never heard the New Pornographers before, came in complaining that she had one of the songs stuck in her head, and she didn't even know what album it was from. By the end of that week, everyone in the room could be heard whistling tunes from the disc even when the stereo was silent. The Electric Version is powerfully addictive, but so far the side effects seem minimal compared with the potency of the high.

Where most bands of this genre are satisfied giving you one hook per song, the NPs often hit you with three in one chorus. Some of these songs are so ear-sweet, they literally give you chills. Neko Case's lead and harmonies take very good songs and make the soar brilliantly. The swooping bass and keyboard fills complement the vocals to give the album a sonic depth unusual for this type of project. Just a great album....I almost wrecked the car on the way to work because my head was swimming in this album!

From the outerlands comes a superior work that could make stone-faced warriors rid themselves of weapons and pride, and break furiously into an air-guitar romp. Electric Version, by The New Pornographers, is the cd that was sent to Earth to fight off the musical termites that are eating their way into our stereos, and ruining our existence. Honestly speaking, this is the work of musical masterminds whose intellects are slightly tweaked to generate a sound so much their own that it causes pain in my sweet, sweet heart. Once you have heard this cd 1.32 times, something will click and your ears will elongate while your brain slips into some hypnotized state. Your heart will pound rapidly and your soul will rip your chest open and bust into a dance, 1/3 reggae and 2/3 the "I am so dern happy that I am just going to fling my arms and legs around." All I am saying is..give it a listen. You will like it. I promise.

The songs of BadFinger, re-written by Elvis Costello, and performed by the surviving members of the B52's, the Go Go's and the Cowsills.

Absolutely infectious

I found this CD to be one of the most refreshing recordings in years. The fresh approaches that these musicians/artists brought to the recording is something that is lacking in music nowadays. It is "jagged" enough to be an indie/subterranean record, yet sleek and appropriately produced, with well-thought arrangements and carefully placed emotions and ideas. Neko Case's presence is out of this world; she sounds a bit like Liz Phair, with that debonnaire attitude and natural "always-a-half-step-flat"-ness, but she's deffinetely a poigniant accent throughout the record.
Very neatly done synth work, although they tend to abuse a certain sawtooth setting.
Drum work is consistant, on-time, and often innovative for a pop-rock album. Bass work is a bit subdued and not well mixed. Guitars are quite inventive and they truly create a "wall of sound" with them.
This record gives me faith in true musicianship in the business again. Without a doubt, one of the best CD's of 2003.