By Nick Canton
I saw the New Pornographers at House of Blues last Wednesday night. It was great. I’ll tell you that in a couple paragraphs, then I want to talk about something that’s been on my mind for a while.
As one might expect from a band as well traveled and talented as the New Pornographers, the show went off amazingly. The entire 8-person band seemed to really be enjoying themselves and had high energy throughout the show. Neko Case was pirouetting between songs (and she should be pleased with her performance), A.C. Newman was bragging about how many people in their touring crew are from Boston (3), Dan Bejar was good-naturedly joked with about changing clothes between songs, citing the cold (come on man, you’re from Canada), Kathryn Calder didn’t banter much but was synthing away on one of two light-up future-y midi keyboards while singing.
The hard and fast details: they went through a whole bunch of new album Brill Bruisers but represented at least a little of each of the other albums. I estimate there were a bunch of songs from Twin Cinema and fewer for the other four albums, but still at least a couple from each. The songs Bejar does vocals for were disproportionately showcased. Two encores. Having seen Neko and Dan in their respective solo projects, it felt like the amazing supergroup of talent it is.
They were fantastic: if you like or are on the fence for New Pornos, go see them and you’ll have a blast. If endearing musicians can win you over it’s worth checking out. Otherwise you shouldn’t go to a show where you dislike the music.
Below is my musing, ideally a conversation starter. Don’t take anything to say I didn’t approve of their song selection. The show was phenomenal and representative of the band’s awesomeness and staying power.
I’m hijacking this show review to talk about when a band gets “old.”
That’s happening to me quite a bit lately. My favorite huge band standbys are getting old, not in the sense of I’m tired of their music. On the contrary, any example I bring up below is keeping it fresh. Old in the sense of they’re releasing their seventh or tenth LPs, and as much as I want to see bands like The Decemberists, Belle & Sebastian, or Wilco, it’s a different experience than the days I first discovered these bands and they were on LP3 or 4.
In 2006, I saw Paul Simon with my family at Mohegan Sun. He was touring in support of his 11th solo album and the show went all the way back, touching on Simon & Garfunkel material as well. It was a great, full, high energy show (dude did five encores) and I was surprised at how many forgotten songs I recognized, but since I only really knew Graceland and the songs he had premiered on SNL a few weeks prior, I was completely satisfied.
Now, that’s my connection to Paul Simon—one album, the soundtrack to The Graduate, and what was on the radio. A concert that amounts to “best of, plus new album” is exactly what I wanted.
This is what the New Pornographers did, but it’s different when you have a deeper connection to the music. The only reason I know what their hits are is from Wikipedia-ing and people telling me about a single they heard. I only know the songs from listening to the albums front-to-back and replaying the ones I had stuck in my head (how was “Miss Teen Wordpower” the last track on Electric Version? Talk about burying the lead). I have favorite songs that casual listeners might have never heard or would have glossed over.
I of course understand that this is what bands have done/should do/will do—you play the new album and forget a lot of the filler tracks for your next album’s tour, stretching the older numbers thinner each time. And a band’s fanbase of casual fans that want this grows. But where music usually occupies such indelible spaces in our lives in most respects, it’s a bit sad that certain songs will be dropped from the live repertoire for good. #1 song I was hoping for and missed out on was Mass Romantic‘s “The Body Says No” with its almost-normal-but-not-quite-normal time-signature. Was that ever/will it ever be something you could experience live? What about b-sides? Did they ever throw them into the mix when trying to fill out tour numbers 1 or 2? They probably couldn’t find a place in a modern tour. And songs off of Brill Bruisers that didn’t make an appearance, like “Hi-Rise.” Not my favorite on the album, but one I was interested to hear live. This would’ve been its best chance to be played. It makes you realize that whereas the song “Brill Bruisers” will be played forever, some songs never really fit into the live stage show and the only real iteration you can get is the one on the LP.
Artists can make a statement or mystery with what they don’t play, intentional or otherwise. I saw Wilco do a huge, long, festival-closing set at Solid Sound 2013 where they touched on all sorts of deep tracks but played nothing off of A Ghost Is Born. Afterward I was left wondering if they are just dismissive of what is one of their stronger albums, or if there’s a legal issue? I know Jamiroquai won’t play anything from their best album, Dynamite, because they felt it was created under label control and resent it.
I always play out different scenarios in my mind when I see a band that has more than a concert’s worth of songs to their name. What songs are non-negotiable? What’s something they had in an L.L. Bean commercial that they’ll probably play? How much room do they have for deep cuts or B-sides? I wonder what the conversation is like when they pull something out that hasn’t been played since their first tour.
There’s no practical solution that would appease the superfan. Unless the band gets a residency and goes through all albums and non-album tracks top-to-bottom, (I saw Harvey Danger do this and it was great, but they only had three albums) you’ll have to deal with the fact that you can only experience some songs from (blown) speakers.
But it’s a part of committing to a band through the years to watch as live songs are lost to time, and knowing you’ll never get exactly what you’re asking for when a band has a hundred songs to choose from is something to which you have to resign yourself.
But I’m thankful that I’m not a bigger Paul Simon fan.
I think as a superfan who’s been with a band from the beginning, you just have to accept when they get bigger that they’re no longer in the phase they were in when you formed your attachment to them, when you saw them at Great Scott with 30 people and chatted with them for a half hour at the merch table. Now they’re at the Orpheum and a buncha goofy college kids are seated around you who don’t even KNOW, man. It does kind of suck, but I dunno, thems the breaks of music fandom. And anyway, great music shouldn’t stay a secret.
Sonic Youth still plays “Teenage Riot” now and then, but even so, it’s not like seeing them do it in 1988–not that I did, but I’m sure it’s not. And sometimes it’s even more disappointing to see an “old” band play their old songs. It varies from band to band, I guess. Usually I am really grateful just to see the person up there, playing anything, whatever keeps them going. I saw Jonathan Richman at the Middle East a couple years ago, and you can bet he didn’t play any Modern Lovers songs. I didn’t know a single song he played. But the show was amazing, he was just the best guy.
I’ve also been on the opposite side of this. I first saw Wilco at the fairly large Calvin Theater in Northampton in 2004. I was brought there by a friend who’d seen them play small bars in the South and knew their whole catalog backwards and forwards. I hadn’t heard any of their songs, I didn’t know the new stuff from the old stuff. I had a really good time at the show though, I was blown away by the musicianship and songwriting, and I came away a definite Wilco fan. There are probably some Wilco fans who swear by A.M. and Being There who’d have hated that show–people for whom Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was already too much of a compromise, much less Summerteeth and Ghost is Born. And then there are people like me, who swear by THOSE three albums and lost interest afterward.