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ARTS

The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, September 7, 2005 - 15A

A Midsummer Night's' Performance

} xu . } ;,t{rb xt* 4 r.";Courtesy of
s~pt. . ...Matador
."Our name
y .'."}f., Is enough
" ..' { , - ,f,;k( ', { to make
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*Indi'e supergroup keeps up
th beat but 'stays complac1 ent

By Alexandra Jones
Daily Arts Editor
MUSICREV IEW
Let's get one thing perfectly clear from the start: The New
Pornographers are a fantastically talented and utterly engag-

ing band. They make power pop with
there's no band like them anywhere.
The band carries no weak members,
and its principals - Canadian musi-
cal luminaries A.C. Newman, Dan
Bejar and Neko Case - also conduct
critically successful solo careers.
Both of their previous albums, 2000's
Mass Romantic and 2003's Electric

a brain and a soul and
The New
Pornographers
Twin Cinema
Matador

Version, are pretty much beyond reproach as examples of
joyous, energetic and inspiring pop records. This is easy to
* understand, right?
But their latest, Twin Cinema, creates a really tough
scenario: A band with a catalogue of complex, vital, sol-
idly enjoyable music puts out a record. Fans have been
awaiting this album for two years, and the musical com-
munity considers release of the new disc to be a landmark
in the band's development. You check release dates, you
buy, you listen, analyze and digest. But somewhere in the
middle of the third or fourth listen, there's this quiet little
snap in your throat, a little like the way you felt when you
were a kid and figured out that all four Beatles weren't
still.alive. You listen over and over again, and while each*
song is emotional, intimate, crystal-clear beautiful, a few
little pieces of the band's unique timbre that you've held
so much faith in for so long are gone, no matter how hard
you look.%
What do you make of an album that's a misstep in the con-

text of the band who made it, but whose qualities are a near-
unreachable goal for anyone else?
To be fair, The New Pornographers might have a bit of
an excuse. Dan Bejar, who's responsible for three tracks on
Twin Cinema, was a little more involved with the band's ear-
lier albums; now, primary songwriter A.C. Newman gives
Bejar's vivid, theatrical songs the keyboards-and-bounce
treatment we've come to love. There's also the question of
whether Twin Cinema would be more aptly compared to
Newman's taut, explosive 2004 solo venture, The Slow Won-
der; the ever-so-slightly deficient tracks on Twin Cinema
- "These Are the Fables," "The Bones of an Idol," "Fall-
ing Through Your Clothes" - sound an awful lot like less
careful versions of the brooding, intense-yet-delicate down-
tempo numbers on The Slow Wonder.
Maybe it's an issue of control: After masterminding an
album that bears the numinous, unmistakable quality of a
vision carried out to the letter, Newman might not be ready
to go back to working with the same buoyant, keyboard pop
and abstract, declamatory lyrics Mass Romantic and Electric
Version are known for. The difference between Twin Cin-
ema and its predecessors is best described with a line from
"These Are the Fables": Case, who possesses what might be
the deepest, most bell-clear mezzo-soprano on earth, sings
the line, "Ten thousand dancing girls kicking cans 'cross the
sky / No reason why." The saccharine tone of the lyrics, even
when sung by Case, sound like a line from Celine Dion's
most recent chest-thumping single. Despite its incessant
energy and bounce - the New Pornographers have never
approached schmaltz.
With "The Jessica Numbers," "Spanish Techno" and
"Jackie, Dressed in Cobras," The New Pornographers more
than compensate for the less-than-perfect tracks on Twin
Cinema. The sad part is that until now, they've never had any
shortcomings to make up for.

FOREST CASEY/Daily
Marianna Anderle, as Helena in the Residential College production of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's
Dream" expresses her sorrow over unrequited love. The play was performed in the Arboretum on Saturday,
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