Deciding what direction to take a successful indie group in its next album is often difficult. With their first three LPs, The New Pornographers took the safe route and continued in the vein of previous hits. Mass Romantic’s capricious tempo changes, virtually-falsetto harmonies and sharp-enough-to-cut-glass guitar riffs threw an intriguing new paradigm into the canon of pop song interpretation. Electric Version added complex layering and more interesting song structures. Finally, Twin Cinema contributed those irresistible hooks.
Rather than continuing the development of those albums, Challengers casts out in a new creative direction and suffers terribly for it. The slower tempo lacks the intensity of any of the group’s previous releases and the songs fail to develop musically, instead recycling the same guitar riffs and vocal melodies. The complex, precise layering that ultimately comprised much of the Pornographers’ innovation has disappeared, only to be replaced with banal acoustic strumming and overly-dramatic orchestral arrangements. Placed over this tired instrumentation, the Pornographers’ iconic harmonies, far from introducing a novel element into assertive pop anthems, only accentuate the album’s general lethargy.
Even the tracks that attempt the energy level of the Pornographers’ previous efforts fall flat due to uninteresting motifs and a lack of structural development. “All The Things That Go To Make Heaven and Earth” has two guitar riffs; “Letter From an Occupant,” the band’s first recording, has at least four. As for structure, “Heaven and Earth” remains wedded to the verse-chorus-verse structure with none of the digressions that makes songs such as “Occupant” interesting.
We can only hope that the Pornographers’ next album begins where they left off with Twin Cinema.
