The New Pornographers

The logic behind supergroups is sound: Take a handful of musicians who all have their own artistic merit, put them together, and they should make brilliant music. The New Pornographers, led by indie-rock royalty A.C. Newman, Neko Case and Dan Bejar, certainly fit this mold.

Yet Challengers, their new LP, sounds more like a solid group putting itself through its paces than a work of collective genius. Many of the songs turn out to be somewhat boring, pseudo-orchestral pop songs with inane lyrics of minimal artistic value that provide mild entertainment.

The album opens with its best pop song, "My Rights Versus Yours," a relatively interesting piece of sunny guitar rock. However, it's followed by "All the Old Showstoppers," which just fails, burdened with pointless lyrics, a shapeless structure and strings. Few things are worse than a bad pop song with strings.

From there, Case takes over lead vocals with "Challengers," an almost lovely, but vapid, song of la la las. The next tune is the strong "Myriad Harbour." It's the first example of originality displayed up to that point, with Bejar using his eccentric storytelling voice to fly over the track as guitars pulse and drums thump out a martial beat.

After a low streak following "Harbour," the band recovers with "Unguided," a celebratory blast of guitar and bells. The lyrics serve as a mission statement for the album. "There is something unguided in the sky," and "You wrote yourself into a corner/Safe, easy to defend your borders." This demonstrates that although the talent of the band is evident in certain songs that are unrestrained and original, others fall victim to a lack of ambition.

Next of note is "Go Places," the album's best and possibly only real love song. Neko Case invites some lucky guy to "Come with me/Go places," an attractive offer due to the upbeat, pretty nature of the song. The quality once again dips on the next track though, with Newman claiming, "Here's the mutiny I promised you." Unfortunately, mutiny never manifests itself in the safe, generic strategy of the album.

The finale "The Spirit of Giving," is the album's Beatles moment, with some steady hand claps and crunchy electric guitar that hints at The New Pornographers' potential for success along the lines of the great supergroups they follow. But until every song can match or at least approach the quality of tracks like "Unguided", Newman, Case and Bejar will remain less than the sum of their individual parts.