All For Swinging You Around. The New Pornographers. 2003. Matador.

 In 2003, I owned a CD player and a turntable. The former was an essential possession, like clothing or porn; I was absolutely bourgeois about it. The latter, I now realize, I had already outgrown and was holding onto strictly because I wanted a relic from my quickly receding past. Vinyl’s golden age was now over and rock and roll, without my ever having taken notice, was breathing its last. Only a few years before, I’d given away the bulk of my vinyl record collection to a co-worker, largely to prove to myself that I was, in opposition to the vinyl purists, dispassionate about the physical collection. If, as I suspect, the guiding principle behind the rock and roll aesthetic, the chief attitude steering its style, is cool, then I had to prove myself, prove my monastic adherence to a form of detachment. What better way to do this than with a literal sacrifice of the rock and roll fan’s most precious totem. One of the final long play releases of the compact disc chapter of the story of rock and roll was the second full length release by the New Pornographers, Electric  Version—in its way a perfect record; the work of young, gifted melodicists holed up in the recording studio with a lot of weed, immersed in Todd Rundgren and Feelies albums. If it’s in any way flawed, it might be too long, owing to its digital format, but the material is all sustained pop virtuosity, and the record never drags.  Structured around a core mood of uncomplicated ebullience, Electric Version is a record of post-romance pop artistry.  It turns the A&R cliché “We don’t hear a single” on its head. All you hear are singles.


Sept 31 021

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