Live: New Pornographers at Leeds Faversham, 19/11/07

After almost ending our friendship over what should be our punchy, semi-ironic opening line, we realised that perhaps our inability to come up with anything we both agreed on in fact also summed up our reaction to The New Pornographers. Not that this indecisiveness is a bad thing. The band’s indefinable and elusive sound is one that is hard to link to any other music around at the moment, yet it remained unobtrusive and somehow felt familiar.

The recent release of their fourth album would make you wonder why The New Pornographers aren’t more of a household name, but with the current media demand for songs you can dance to, there’s little outlet for this sort of music. Despite managing to achieve a perfect balance of upbeat, jazzy songs with the slower, more sentimental ones, the overall sound was one that you’re more likely to want to listen to alone in your room rather than out with friends. Think Belle and Sebastian meet the piano rhythms of Chuck Berry, along with nostalgic lyrics, to create a compilation of “happy songs about sad things”, as one fan summarised.

The band varies from four to eight members, each person contributing what they can to the music as well as following their own individual careers in the meantime. You’d think that this would lead to chaos at times or at least an element of compromise, but the general impression received is one of a mutual artistic ideal which everyone seems to understand and pursue. The frequent definition of their music as ‘powerpop’ seems to imply that their songs might lack emotional maturity or substance, but their refreshingly innocent sound mixed with time-old harmonies was inspiring and left you wanting more. The understated atmosphere of the evening was mirrored by the relaxed style of the crowd, and overall left us with a satisfying sense of thoughtful optimism. And how many gigs can that be said for?

9/10

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