The New Pornographers -- "The Electric Version"
I still remember the day I walked into a Washington, DC used bookstore and heard the New Pornographers for the first time. I didn't have to ask the clerk what he was playing: I had read about the band already, and as soon as I heard it I knew who it was, so perfectly did the description match the sound.
I listened to "The Electric Version" -- both the song and the album -- on a regular basis for years to come. Here we find the power-pop sublime as it has rarely been achieved: there's a little bit of Blondie here in the vocals and the dashes of synth, some Elvis Costello in the wry, clever lyrics, and hooks a-plenty. The guitars are powerful but they never take over. There's also, I think, just a bit of '80s hair-metal styling in here with the drums that, when you listen closely, prove to be surprisingly heavy, and when A. C. Newman's vocals reach into a near-falsetto. The overall sound is timeless, though, hinting at everything that's happened since The Beatles (except for The Beatles). (There's a lot of tastefully employed e-bow elsewhere on the album, to give it that up-to-date feel.)
The best part of this track is Neko Cases' walk-on vocal part, the way the word "magnets" takes on an extra syllable at the end just to give it a nice, clean finish. This is fine ensemble work, even if it was recorded in bits and pieces. There's a lot of talent on display in this track, and as with just about every song on the album, this one is imminently listenable, the kind of thing you can't help singing along to.
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