Together Review

When I was 15 years-old, I flew to Minneapolis for a week to join a music program in which I studied jazz bass. While there, I met a rock-centric guitarist named Daniel. We talked over lunch one day about the bands we were both performing with at the closing ceremony at the end of the week. Daniel lamented about the large band he was in, and how he felt that he added nothing notable to their sound. I vented as well, explaining that there were only a few moments where I really felt that my jazz ensemble had settled into a groove.

Together, the latest offering from the Canadian Octo-supergroup The New Pornographers, sounds like the unity we were both envisioning.Together never falls prey to the "too many chefs" problems that groups half the size of The New Pornographers constantly face, but instead takes advantage of their size in order to fill every sonic crevice possible. Simply put, it is a triumphantly warm album, filled to the edges of the disc with pied-piper whimsy that most bands only dream of attaining.

All three of the band's main vocalists get their turn to shine. Dan Bejar's tracks in particular are standouts, melding the folk of his more avant-garde poetic side project Destroyer with the perfect pop of The New Pornographers. Bejar's "Silver Jenny Dollar" sounds like a retooled version of "Entering White Cecilia", a track on their prior album, Challengers. This time around, though, it sounds like a group effort, and not just Bejar with a backing band.

(Flash back to the jazz ensemble: The night of our big concert, we performed an awesome rendition of Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man". And even though I hit an extra C note during the transition, we all ended the show grinning ear to ear, accompanied by tremendous applause. We truly felt that our sound had tightened up, that we were playing in unison as a band of eight or nine musicians who had found common ground).

At certain points throughout the album you can't help but be overwhelmed by the synergy. "Crash Years" has some of the best whistling that Indie Pop has ever heard, and "Daughters Of Sorrow" climaxes with a harmony that would make The Beach Boys blush. The occasional guest appearances (Zach Condon of Beirut and The Dap Kings, to name a few) don't hurt either. It may lackMass Romantic's powerpop frills, or Electric Version's galloping gusto, but Togetheruses the result of its perfectly intertwined star power to captivate in its own unique way.

REVIEWED BY RAYMOND CHALME

RAYMOND'S FAVORITE TRACKS: Crash Years, Silver Jenny Dollar, Moves