Carl Newman was on an unstoppable tear — an all-time NBA Jam “HE’S ON FIRE” power-pop onslaught. His band the New Pornographers had exploded out of Vancouver with their high-powered, ultra-catchy 2000 debut album Mass Romantic, becoming an underground sensation and somewhat of a supergroup in reverse (as the New Pornos further bolstered Neko Case’s already ascendant alt-country career, shined a much brighter spotlight on oblique poet-crank Dan Bejar’s eternally evolving Destroyer project, and confirmed Newman as a generational talent in his own right). The band’s second album, 2003’s Electric Version, kept that momentum going with another set of turbo-charged pop-rock tracks that made impressive use of the group’s multi-vocalist arsenal. And with The Slow Wonder, his 2004 solo debut album as A.C. Newman, he’d delivered some of the finest songs of his career, tunes that proved he could thrive both inside and outside the New Pornographers’ blown-out template.
Twin Cinema, released 20 years ago this Saturday, was the magnum opus: the biggest, boldest New Pornographers album to date, and possibly the best. (The answer is usually “whichever one of those first three I listened to most recently.”) Here were 16 stellar tracks — enough for double vinyl if they wanted — that encapsulated the group’s appeal while subtly expanding their sound. “It was where we really began to branch out,” Newman said two years later. “It maintained a lot of the energy of Mass Romantic and Electric Version, but it was introducing all these elements. I feel like it was a transition record in a really good way. Sometimes, transition records are considered weak records, but I feel like that’s what makes it really strong.”
The variation is not the most important aspect of the album — this is no one’s idea of an experimental record — but it undeniably made Twin Cinema feel like a step forward in terms of sophistication. Sometimes the changes are structural, like the rhythmic foundation that makes “Use It” rumble along like no other New Pornos track or the flickering delay effect that gives “Three Or Four” its own jarring sense of balance. Others are aesthetic flourishes, like the mariachi horns that break out on closing track “Stacked Crooked” or the lush waves of Pet Sounds-via-Summerteeth harmony that fully submerge “The Bones Of An Idol” by the end. Sometimes the change is a matter of dynamics, as on “The Bleeding Heart Show,” the definitive New Pornographers power ballad, which affirmed that this band’s songs could be just as gripping when they’re not bashing you over the head from the start.
But sometimes the songs did still bash you over the head from the start, not least of all the first one. “Twin Cinema” comes bursting out of the gate with the violent jubilation that made New Pornos’ first couple albums so intoxicating. It’s more refined than “Mass Romantic,” but no less potent. Bejar begins his own highlight “Broken Beads” completely unrestrained, then keeps letting his voice spiral all over the song’s shifting landscape; the supernatural-creature vibes when he cuts loose sometimes resemble fellow British Columbia guy Spencer Krug, who’d soon be enjoying his own glow-up with the release of Wolf Parade’s debut.
Even when singing against gentle acoustic strums on “Streets Of Fire,” Bejar is an electrifying presence, the guy who makes the New Pornographers feel not just impossibly good but otherworldly. That voice, so lecherous and professorial on Destroyer albums, feels practically alien when stepping into Newman’s realm. Case, always the biggest star and the brightest-burning vocal talent of the bunch, is similarly a lightning bolt every time she steps into the foreground, even though she’s mostly assigned to the gentlest songs here. (Per Newman, that was by design, so people didn’t sleep on the slower ones.)
The New Pornographers never would have been such a revelation without that rotating cast of characters out front, each voice darting and weaving in the background when not claiming the spotlight. The variety and interplay elevated them, made them feel like a bustling world unto themselves. Yet it’s Newman, the band’s founder and proprietor, who carries this LP. Bursting with confidence and pleasingly off-kilter ideas, his writing was hitting a sweet spot between the unhinged sugar rush of the group’s early work and the measured maturity that sometimes made the later albums feel sleepy. Reining in some of his rangier tendencies and putting away the thesaurus from time to time, he was crafting deep cuts that would be career highlights for most bands. And in “Sing Me Spanish Techno,” he delivered arguably the definitive New Pornos anthem, a soaring sing-along that might just have you listening too long to one song.
For all its peculiarities, this was pop music, through and through — an album that targeted your pleasure centers, sometimes from unusual angles, but with a staggering degree of accuracy. For indie rock fans, it was easy to wonder back then why an act like the New Pornographers could not take over the radio and become one of the biggest bands in the world. On the other hand, the name was probably an impediment, the members never styled themselves to look like rock stars, and the lyrics were so cerebral and oblique that the general public never had much emotionally to latch onto. So they remained a massively successful cult concern, a beloved fixture of the indie rock world. If Twin Cinema was a transitional record, it was also the one that cemented them as legends among those in the know.
