The New Pornographers

The New Pornographers are a Canadian indie rock group formed in 1997 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The name of the band represents a subversion of a comment by disgraced televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, who once referred to modern music as "the new pornography." Their sound is influenced by that of such power pop bands as The Cars and Cheap Trick; their songs, however, are generally of a greater melodic and harmonic complexity. Carl Newman, who writes most of the band's material, has said, "When I seriously started to try to write songs, my main influences were, like, Burt Bacharach, Jim Webb, and Brian Wilson. Those were the guys I kinda looked at their music and went, 'What the hell are they doing here?' I was just fascinated by the structures and the harmonics."

The melody of the first and eponymous track on their second album Electric Version, for instance, begins with an arpeggiated diminished triad --- a rare and strange opening flourish for a pop...