The New Pornographers

I arrived at Sydney’s Gaelic Club soaking wet and stinking drunk. I ran through pouring rain and made it there just in time. On the way and, in fact, for most of that day, I had ‘Sing Me Spanish Techno’ stuck in my head. I hummed it and whistled it; they opened with this song, and played it with more fervor than I had thought possible.

For some reason, it was actually quite surprising how much better The New Pornographers are in a live setting than on record. Even at the Gaelic Club - a venue where that sound was once summed up marvelously, by someone, as being "the aural equivalent of smearing Vaseline on your glasses" - they impress. And even without Dan Bejar (aka Destroyer: I like his input into the band the most of all its members), they were still really tight, shifting through a wide range of their material with great precision.

TNP play the hits, but not just the obvious ones. All the songs played seemed like hit singles, an impression heightened by the way they were belted out and received by the audience. Despite their power-pop nature, their song structures are complex: they seem to be one of those bands that can straddle both arenas, replicating sounds from their albums and furthering them with an added energy.

I never knew The New Pornographer’s fan base was so, well, old! It was no stale affair, though; I guess they are fairly 'adult contemporary', in their own way. The band has been together for a fairly long time now (since 1997 - indie-pop timeline ed), but they still all clearly share a passion for the music they make. The crowed shared this too, and on a stormy evening, it was something special.