The New Pornographers - Challengers
|
List Price: Our Price: $10.99 You Save: $0.99 (8%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $7.21 (click here) Category: Music CD See more new music releases 
|
|---|
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store
Canadian Music Store
Free Music Notes for Challengers
Free Music Review: A Time For Everything
Hit: 5 Stars
I've loved The New Pornographers since Mass Romantic, and have thoroughly enjoyed each of their albums. In Electric Version, they kicked their sound up a notch, putting themselves through their power-pop paces. With Twin Cinema, they deepened their sound and forged a synthesis between the melancholia of Carl Newman and the rampaging brio of his fellow band members.
I've been listening to Challengers constantly for several months now. It continues to grow on me. I think, strangely enough, that this may be my favorite of their albums, and their strongest to date. The orchestration, harmonies, and songwriting are perhaps sedate, but they are peerlessly beautiful and still have the strong propulsion of earlier New Pornographers.
Perhaps this album is a response to the state of things. Given the current geopolitical strife, troubling climate change, and fracturing international economy, I don't know if I would have written a roof-raiser either. The New Pornographers are a product of their time, and their albums have always subtly reflected the world into which they were born. This is an album for 2007, for better or for worse. I can think of no more perfect an album to hunker down with while we wait for the ball to drop and the frame to, hopefully, shift.
Free Music Review: One of my All-time Favorites!
Hit: 5 Stars
The more I listened, the more I loved it!!!! Their most polished album yet. Similar to their others, but still unique.Free Music Review: Highly enjoyable...
Hit: 4 Stars
I haven't been a New Pornographers fan for too long so I bought this kind of on a whim. I figured it would be a good album to have for my trip back home for the holidays and it turned out to be way more than I expected. Every song is enjoyable, especially after more and more listens. 'My Rights Verses Yours' is a great way to begin the album, which also consists of very moving tracks like 'Challengers.' It's not an album that exactly changed my life, though it could have, possibly, under the right circumstances. Free Music Review: Not Sure What to Call It
Hit: 5 Stars
I don't know where to start. (Be gentle, this is my first time.)
N.P. is a rock band. But it isn't a group of people who just take a tune and jam with it, recording as they go. This stuff is composed, arranged, and must require many, many rehearsals prior to recording. N.P. uses a huge variety of rhythms, melodies, chord structures, and instrumentation. Better yet is that there are counter rhythms, melodies, chord structures, and instrumentation. If you don't particularly care for what you are currently hearing, just wait 15 seconds. Stuff changes a lot. I am constantly thinking "how did he (he, being A. C. Newman, I believe) come up with that".
The above described type of music, to me, makes N.P. (particularly this album) a group to be listened to - not a background type of thing, though their earlier albums are more standard R&R, and therefore more of something I might put on in the background. This album made me buy their first three. My take is that they are progressing from a "never quite standard" R&R band to something different, something special. I don't like the method of recording the first album - to me, it is somewhat muffled. The second album is still more of a pure R&R. It's still really good, with some of the chord and instrumentation variations but, generally speaking, each cut keeping the beat it started with all the way through. Album three is a continued expansion of Newman's talent, and properly fits between the R&R and the "not sure what to call it" style of album four.
What groups does N.P. sound like? Nobody I know. But while listening, certain parts make me think of Queen, Beatles, Beach Boys, and Pink Floyd. Mostly, I think N.P. is unique.
Free Music Review: When great musicians get together...
Hit: 5 Stars
I heard a review on NPR. I heard that Niko Case was involved. I bought it and can't stop listening. Clever and sweet - even my teenage kids love it. Especially like Myriad Harbors and Go Places. I'll buy the rest of their albums as well.