Mass Romantic Cary NC

Mass Romantic

The New Pornographers

Mint Records, 2000

REVIEW BY: Sean McCarthy

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 11/25/2003

In the liner notes of Mass Romantic, the first full-length album by Canadiansupergroup The New Pornographers, the band acknowledged that thealbum was recorded over an extended period of time, in creativebursts. Twelve creative bursts, to be precise.

Thanks to the exposure of Neko Case (still basically ignored bymainstream, but worshipped by music geeks), The New Pornographershave been getting attention by mainstream music media. There'snothing particularly new about Mass Romantic; most of the music is reminiscent of 80salterna-power pop bands like The Replacements and the Cars, or 90sBrit-pop. Even if originality isn't the band's strongest suit,their energy and tight execution more than makes up for the lack ofnew ideas.

The lyrics of Mass Romantic were written by Dan Bejar and Carl Newman.Both Bejar and Newman have a keen knack for writing depressinglyrics (see "Execution Day" or "Letter From an Occupant") andsurrounding them with candy-coated pop arrangements. Call it martyrpop. The best example of this is "The Slow Descent IntoAlcoholism," a song that will defy you to want to go out and investin a pogo stick. The song is deceptively simple and happy-soundinguntil you hear Newman's scream "Salvation, holdout central" forabout a dozen times. It's an anthem that deserves to be mentionedin the same sentence as Oasis' "Cigarettes and Alcohol" for "bestsong about debauchery in the past 20 years."

Some songs are a tad too familiar for their own good. "The BodySays No" is supposed to be sly and witty, but sounds precociouslyclose to Styx. The lyrics to "Mystery Hours" and "The Mary MartinShow" seem to be too intelligent for their own good and sometimes,when the band veers away from the discipline pop structure, theybuckle under their own ambitions.