#1: Twin Cinema

The New Pornographers: Twin Cinema
The Old Milwaukee beer ads used to say, "Guys... it doesn't get any better than this." The guys were always in the woods, away from their wives and kids, and sitting around a campfire or something. Sure, a little Brokeback Mountain, maybe. But for those beer-drinking guys and for most of us, work usually sucks, relationships can be taxing, and money is somehow never plentiful. What we need is cheap beer.

We need diversions from life's overwhelming seriousness, and for people like me, music has always been that. Pop music in particular has the elusive quality of conveying a free doubleshot of happiness in three measly minutes. And pop music simply doesn't get better than Twin Cinema. I want to see The New Pornographers try, but with this album, i'll really be satisfied for years and years.

See, head porno Carl Newman writes most of the stuff, but he's also supplanted by crazy-uncle figure Dan Bejar on a few tracks. To make it even more interesting (and busty!), they have Neko Case, who was created in the image of Patsy Cline. So you have a constant shuffling of vocals, of musical styles, of highs and relative lows, and 14 tracks worthy of being released as their own singles.

On an album of standouts, "The Bleeding Heart Show" is somehow still easily my song of the album, and of the year. It's Twin Cinema in a nutshell--a simple ballad sung by Newman and Case that morphs into a chorus of woos from the entire band (that always gets me teary), which then rocks out over the most beauftiful pop convention of them all, they "hey-la, hey-la, hey-la, hey-laaaaaa." Then Case takes it up and away higher yet, as only she can, and all in attendance (at least at the 9:30 Club this past fall) are left breathless and goosebumped.

Pop music is not groundbreaking, and the New Pornographers are not aiming for anything like that. The lyrics are fractured, but things that at first seem nonsensical, when done so perfectly, take on new meaning. Case in point for me is "Sing Me Spanish Techno," which didn't fully grab hold of me until about the 10th time through the album. The chorus "Listening too long /to one song... Sing me Spanish techno" all at once crushed me. 2005 had its moments, but an all-encompassing feeling of treading water was its most pervasive quality. It turns out that I had been listening too long to one song, or to quote another song here, "for you there's not any warning / and love is five in the morning." What such stuff was meant to mean, I don't know. It's not important. Just put it over a ridiculously catchy keyboard line, it invariably sticks in your head, and then you are hearing it all day. And sometimes, that's whatcha need.

Twin Cinema's simply the album that got me through 2005, and I'm quite sure the one from the year that I'll listen to the most over the rest of my life.

So, Happy New Year, everybody. Here's to 2006. It does get better than this.