There's a version of The Former Site Of that doesn't exist: the bloated, overstuffed one that the New Pornographers have been threatening to make for fifteen years. The Canadian indie-pop collective's tenth album — out March 27 on Merge, with a lineup trimmed to A.C. Newman, Kathryn Calder, Neko Case, John Collins, Todd Fancey, and new drummer Charley Drayton — is their most disciplined, focused record since Together.
Newman describes the new recording process in a press statement: 'Having time in my studio really opened things up. I don't like wasting my bandmates' time, and always felt guilty when I'd give them a song, ask them to do something, then completely change the song and ask them to do it again. Now I can get the skeleton of a song together first — just a couple of elements, the key feeling, really as little as possible — before bringing it to the band and running from there.' That approach shows. The Former Site Of has a skeletal clarity that the band hasn't had since Mass Romantic-era.
'Votive,' the lead single, is classic New Pornographers: an animated video, a melody that sounds like it was born in 1969, and a production that manages to be both polished and slightly impractical. Neko Case's vocals on 'Spooky Action' are a reminder that she remains one of the most distinctive voices in indie rock, capable of turning even a middling song into something significant by sheer force of presence.
'Pure Sticker Shock' and 'Ballad of the Last Payphone' do the classic New Pornographers thing of making you feel like you're experiencing pure joy, which is harder to achieve than it looks. 'Great Princess Story' opens the album with proper energy. 'The Wine Remembers the Water' is the kind of title that Newman writes when he's at his most playful and least explicable.
Not every track here is essential — 'Wish You Could See Me I'm Killing It' doesn't quite live up to its name — but The Former Site Of is the most confident and cohesive New Pornographers album in a very long time, and that alone makes it worth celebrating. Grade: B+.