Was turned on to the awesome podcast “Sound Opinions” recently, and one of the episodes I had to catch up on was their interview with the New Pornographers. They spent a fair amount of time during the broadcast talking about other projects the various New Pornographer contributors were involved with (though it’s probably more fair to call the New Pornographers the real “side project”, since they’re all so active outside of the supergroup), which prompted me to pick up some solo material from the individuals.
First up… Todd Fancey’s solo release : Fancey.
To be fair, I’m going in to this with the New Pornographers on my mind, so expectations may be unreasonable.
Overall, the record is really growing on me. I’ve blown through the whole thing several times (despite ambivalence on the first listen), and there’s definitely some high points here where my expectations are met, or gradually moved in a new direction.
We definitely have some of the most compelling things about the associated supergroup — songs like “Sunbrite” have the crazy layered melodies, introspective pauses and put the multiple vocalists front and center.
There’s a bit more depth though, which may be what is gradually sinking in on me. I’d expect that the obvious hits for me would be the faster material like “Carry Me”, since my roots are primarily in punk. That said, as I age I’m finding that I like more and more variety, so there’s been room for Pop in recent years as well.
With tracks like “In Town”, you get the soaring melodies and harmonic hooks which I’ve come to count on the New Pornographers to provide, which was exciting. Even the slower, more somber tracks like “Dial Jupiter” are interesting, combining slower, moody passages with more upbeat and aggressive breaks.
All in all, it has enough of the New Pornographers spunk to be a good listen, while maintaining some measure of introspection and personality which don’t make it obviously derivative. Give it a 7 of 10.
wanted to start writing reviews again, without the overhead of having to do it on a schedule. I wrote reviews for Maximum RocknRoll for 11 years, and it was often draining to have deadlines, forced conscription to bad records etc. This is more on the “opt-in” style, so I’ll be free to review whatever I like.
Considering starting another shoutcast stream specific to the content mentioned here… I’m already doing killedbydeath and slowmotion disaster, but they’re pretty niche and have their own special slants.
More to come.