The New Pornographers have built a reputation as some of the most ingenious creators of sparkling and supremely catchy indie pop of the last 10 years. Filled with sublime harmonies and powerful arrangements, their songs have been at the forefront of critically and commercially successful independent music ever since they released their debut album “Mass Romantic” (2000). Their fifth album — “Together,” released last Tuesday — continues to refine the eminently entertaining sound for which they have come to be known, yet does little to break new ground.
Still, “Together” could be called one of their strongest albums, even if it misses the consistent, frenetic inspiration of “Mass Romantic” or the giddy yet mature and poignant highs of their last album, “Challengers” (2007).
“Together,” as the title may imply, is largely free of the angst and yearning for connection found in its predecessors. Instead, its mood is largely one of optimism, and if this may not be new territory for the New Pornographers, then it at least is a comfortable domain in which the band can produce more of its ear-pleasing melodiousness.
Starting off with the feel-good cello and guitar riffs and wordless “oh oh” harmonies of “Moves,” the new album launches directly into catchy, power-chord pop, returning the veteran New Pornographers listener to the inspirational sunny-day feeling with which he or she is by now familiar. The fevered pitch of this first song is only intensified by the transition into “Crash Years,” a song that makes inventive use of the standard descending doo-wop chord progression seen in countless tunes since the ’50s.
The song features some rather nonsensical lyrics (admittedly, nothing new for the band). In the New Pornographers’ case, however, such lyrical vagueness is hardly the point, as their words tend to serve as mood-setting bases upon which the group can hang its beautiful melodies. Indeed, by the time the song reaches its climactic fade-out of chiming harmonies set to the simultaneously poignant and hopefully promising words, “The ruins were wild / Tonight will be an open mike,” any lyrical criticisms are rendered completely irrelevant as the listener basks in the impossibly (yet genuinely) sunny soundscape the band has built.
Other highlights of the new album include the bouncy, tightly-coiled guitar and piano pop of “Sweet Talk, Sweet Talk” and the beautiful and comforting “My Shepherd,” a surprisingly (if only seemingly) standard love song featuring the soaring lead vocals of Neko Case (who usually sings backup to either frontman A.C. Newman’s straight-ahead slick rock vocals or Dan Bejar’s verbose, Bowie-esque yelps and snickers).