The New Pornographers/Here We Go Magic, Camden Electric Ballroom

The New Pornographers

May 19, 2010

In a week when the sun’s finally starting to come out in London, it’s difficult to think of a more suitable, or indeed well-matched, pairing of bands to soundtrack the start of the warm weather – Canadian sometime-supergroup The New Pornographers were backed by New York’s sprightly Here We Go Magic at a sold out show at Camden’s Electric Ballroom, where the charm, and the hooks, were laid on for an enthusiastic crowd.

Here We Go Magic’s set was promising – you get a sense that the band, led by Luke, formerly a solo artist, is still coming together, even on the eve of the release of their second album. This isn’t a criticism – Temple’s compositions are complex and veer from moments of pop immediacy to longer passages of psychedelic ambience. As a listener, they keep you on your toes – just when they seem to have settled into a series of shorter pop songs, the band will swap instruments and lurch into more experimental material.

New single ‘Collector’ is a case in point – the song storms from the off, country-esque guitars backed by organ flourishes as the band’s voice multiply. They sound a little bit like they combine the forward momentum of Neon Bible-era Arcade Fire with the precision of Field Music. Judging from their set, the promise is there – if they can balance their pop and experimental tendencies in an engaging way on their forthcoming record Pigeons, they well find their fanbase growing.

The New Pornographers are, of course, another collection of musicians led by one man adept at crafting indie pop songs, and tonight, at first, the band seem very much like a Carl Newman project. No Neko Case, no Dan Bejar (not that we were expecting them) – it was up to Newman to bring the energy of the band’s studio recordings to a live setting. He eventually succeeded, after something of a slow start, and he was matched all the way by Kathryn Calder, who has begun to play an increasingly large role in the band and whose voice quite often soared above the crowd of musicians crammed onto the stage.

Indie classics from Twin Cinema and Mass Romantic made the biggest impact, though the band’s most recent material seemed to stand up well. At times, however, it was difficult to equate the number of people on stage with the kind of energy being conveyed through the music – the hooks were their certainly, and the diehards enjoyed the hits, but the spark that seems almost ever present on record only made fleeting appearances. Newman is a master songwriter, for certain, and an entertaining frontman, and maybe this show can be considered something of a warm up for the festival season – where The New Pornographers should really come into their own.

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