Music Marathon 2007, Part 13 (New Pornographers, The – Noisettes, The)

The New Pornographers – Challengers

Some bands evolve in massive jumps from release to release, and some establish a slower pace, in which each album yields small, but significant innovations hinted at on the previous album. The New Pornographers are clearly in the second camp, and the ornate Challengers is exactly the album one might expect them to make after Twin Cinema, which found the band experimenting with ballads and orchestration beyond guitars, bass, drums, and keys (which, in turn, picked up from the A.C. Newman solo album, The Slow Wonder). Luckily, the fact that this turn toward the grandiose might have been somewhat predictable doesn’t diminish the album, itself.