Albums2010 Revisited: Twin Cinema

I tried to recall when The New Pornographers came into my life recently, and I just can't. Sometime in college, and I think it was a recommendation from my cousin Emily, who had better taste in music than I did at the time and probably still does, come to that, I found Twin Cinema, put it in the CD player, hit play, and then...

Wondered where the hell this band had been all my life.

Lyrically, they're a little abstract-- 'Jackie, Dressed In Cobras', 'Sing Me Spanish Techno', 'Falling Through Your Clothes'; I'm not sure what's going on here. But also... it doesn't matter? The songs are just good, plain and simple-- I don't know what 'Sing Me Spanish Techno' is about, but it doesn't matter, because it works. Jackie, whoever she is, dressed in cobras works as an image, but I don't know if it's a metaphor for something or what, and I don't mind. Same with The Jessica Numbers-- what are the Jessica Numbers? Who is Jessica? This is another aspect of this band that I would love to explore more-- never mind the structure and how it works or their creative process, but what do they write about?

Sonically, I think they're even harder to describe. Power pop? Indie pop? I feel like they could slot in perfectly into that period of time where you had bands like The Shins at the height of their powers (The Decemberists, Fleet Foxes, Rilo Kiley-- think that flavor of bands)-- I can probably think of a couple of more that fall into that rough flavor/musical sound. Put them all together in a Pandora playlist, and you'd know exactly what I'm talking about.

There are no bad songs on this album. No skips. 

This band is really hard to get a grip on, and I think part of the reason might be that it's a weird supergroup/collective of people who are also in OTHER bands (or have been in the past). Just running down the current listed members and their projects/other bands:

Neko Case

Maow

The Corn Sisters

case/lang/veirs

the Evaporators

Destroyer

Thorsen

A.C. Newman

Superconductor

Zumpano

Thee Crusaders

Fancey

Limblifter

Kathryn Calder

Immaculate Machine

Frontperson

So, of the five current members, you've got four who have solo artist careers (Case, Newman, Fancey, and Calder), and then other than that, you have a list of groups/bands that have no overlap currently, which means if you exclude the solo stuff you have 12 unique bands that blend into The New Pornographers. (Past members have a little bit more overlap with Destroyer, Limblifter, and Thee Crusaders showing up in the list.) 

How do you make this work? This is kind of fascinating to think about-- all these musicians just working on other projects, and then occasionally they all get together and cut an album for TNP? How does that show in the music for TNP? Do the influences change over time? Do the lyrics? Does the sound? Unpacking the creative process for how these albums get made would be fascinating to watch as well. 

To flip back a second to Twin Cinema itself:

All songs were written and sung by A.C. Newman except where noted-- so Neko Case takes vocals for 'The Bones of an Idol', 'These are the Fables' and shares with Case on 'The Bleeding Heat Show', 'Three or Four' and 'Star Bodies' before joining the Bejar on the vocals for 'Streets of Fire'.  If I'm reading this track listing right, Newman did handle the bulk of the writing except for 'Streets of Fire', 'Broken Breads' and 'Jackie, Dressed In Cobras', which were handled by Bejar and shared credit on 'The Jessica Numbers' with John Collins.

So that's even more fascinating to me, because again, how does the process of the creation work here? Are they all like friends? Is this more of a Superfriends or power pop Canadian Justice League-- (wait! POWER POP ALPHA FLIGHT!) where they just get together and do an album and tour a little bit and then go work on their own stuff? Every time I dig into this band, I think I wind up with more questions than answers because it's just so fascinating to read about, and what they make is just... magical.

I know it seems like every time I write about TNP, I always find myself wanting to do a deep dive on their discography, and I think perhaps that time has come. I've been thinking about ways of taking my music writing up to the Substack, and this might be a good concept to explore or play with. 

To wrap it up:

I saved the very best for just about the end on the original run of Albums2010-- the Archives has Twin Cinema in the #99 slot, and my original review dropped on March 30, 2018.

This time around, this album was just as good as I remembered it-- but I think I sort of faded out with this album originally, sort of checking out around two-thirds of the way through, around 'Falling Through Your Clothes', which is a shame because the final five tracks on here are just as good as the first nine. (It was kind of a pleasant surprise rediscovering those back half tracks.)

Once again, I find myself feeling inadequate when it comes to writing about this band. Canada's best-kept musical secret? I think you could make the argument-- if you haven't checked out The New Pornographers, there's no time like the present.