Yeah Yeah Yeahs Corollary

Though the last time I wrote about the New Pornographers it was in praise of their madcap uptempo song "Wild Homes," I also very much enjoy their new record, "Together," even though it's stylistically quite different. The songs move slower, take longer to unfurl and, amidst it all, suggest something wistful and perhaps something once had, briefly lost and then recaptured. Like its predecessor, "Challengers," the album shows the band has matured as I wish all bands did.

Neither record has received as much critical adulation as their first ones, when the band was a welcome, unexpected kick from British Columbia, but they're an established indie band these days that ranks almost as high as one can be without being considered mainstream, so it doesn't matter as much. Nonetheless, I think the band deserves credit for acknowledging they're older and finding a sound that evolves well to match that. They've modified their sound to the point that the albums sound different and don't repeat each other, without becoming a different band. Few bands pull off this trick.

Above is the New Pornographers' recent performance of the first single, "Crash Years," on Jimmy Fallon's show. It's the album's biggest pop nugget and the crowd in the background is very exuberant, though I think that's more attributable to the show's producers, who always seem to want a "youthful club vibe" for the set as musicians perform, than the song. The atmosphere obscures another layer in there; it has something to do with that opening lyric in the chorus: "The traffic was slow for the crash years."

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are another example to succeed at this shift, as noted previously here. Also worth noting, as one of those out-of-left-field neat things, Karen O and her guitarist, Nick Zinner, played a show last month at the Colonial Theater, in my temporary home's downtown. Unfortunately, I missed it by a week.