Electric Version [Import]

You can't beat an upbeat, offbeat, musically complex album that puts you in a good mood. If you're up for pop, the New Pornographers' latest could find you pleasantly surprised. Electric Version is a bit of a sugar-fuelled sunset high; like speeding through the countryside at age 10, eating too much candy in a beaten up Duster driven by your older brother.

But the more curious thing about the album than it's Meatloaf-on-Lucky-Charms blast from a Little League past, or mini- romp with Wings, the Pixies and even a little Kinks, is that the lyrics sound hesitatingly like... Christian rock. They aren't printed, but you can make out enough of the words to seal that deal. There's a song titled 'A Testament to Youth in Verse,' where the N.P. manage to throw in, "Can we control ourselves for once/ keep our hands off each other/ keep our minds on the sum of each other's souls." In 'Loose Translation,' a narrative song about a girl in a green shirt, the ball starts rolling with "One holy ghost for a holy girl." And 'The Laws Have Changed' sports this refrain: "All hail/ what will be revealed today/ when we peer to the great unknown/ from the land of the throne," topping it off with a chorus nah-nah-nah-ing "form a line to the throne." But the tiny lyric to tip me off in this direction was from 'It's Only Divine Right,' which might have said enough right there: "you hair parted like the red sea." Very particular, not that random.

Perhaps this was just another instance of theme-and-variations. Or perhaps these are the tentative stanzas of passive-aggressive Christian rockers, albeit with a real sense of music. The case was closed for me when I found the band pulled its name from a comment Jimmy Swaggart once made about music.

Enough said. The fact remains that the lines are ambiguous, I am absolutely reading into them, and the album's origins and purposes remain ambiguous. But the work does suffer from the association, if only because certain ideologies don't lend themselves well to music, and the lyrics give us enough fuel to feel there's more than one purpose at hand: they're painting a self-conscious ideological backdrop. It's like singing a partial hypothesis; concept rips the soul out of the song if it isn't in cohoots with the emotions, and it stops being that cathartic trip it's meant to be. This also goes, by the way, for Billy Bragg and 10,000 Maniacs singing about war and child abuse. It's the wrong medium for shaking the finger or laying out a game plan.

That said, the worst of the album comes when the partly-veiled, pseudo-Christian themes, cavorting around in a major key, hold you captive to a band of wistful utopians tentatively pleading with the world, under the table, to make a certain brand of nice. The flip side is that candy-colored ride into the sunset. The two images are on a see-saw when you listen, and you'll get both unless you insist the lyrical confusion be lost in the keyboards. It's not that hard.

Hands down, Electric Version is fantastic, sunny, dirty, power-pop, and it's worth that see-saw just to taste that mouthful of Skittles. But c'mon you Canadians, just play us some music! Do something else to make us good--

Part of me doesn't want to write this review. This music is the most wodnerful, poppiest, catchiest music you will ever, EVER, hear. And it's absolutely glorious, ever so glorious.

But, in that same gloriousness lies the problem with what is easily one of the best albums of 2003. It makes you feel all fruity. The music is - for lack of better words - fruity. This one of those albums you don't show off to the guys. Unless you wan them to think less of you. It's not manly music at all - but it's so, so good. Most artists can only dream of making singles as catchy as every song on this album is.

These 7 Canadians made something really, really special. They've made a catchy rock album that actually makes you want to dance without ever sounding cheesy or lame. It's just really good, original music like nothing else out there right now. Seriously, who else has 5 vocalists and three members who play 3 different instruments? The New Pornographers are insanely talented, can be painfully poppy, but are always enjoyable on their sophomore "Electric Version." Have fun explaining exactly what the "New Pornographers" are to person at the cash regester, I sure couldn't.

Power pop should always be this fun. Nearly every song is a great singalong. If you are used to straight-up power pop, this one may take a few spins. The band, an indie supergroup (if you can say that), injects a little indie spice to make this just a bit off-kilter. But in a good way. A song you are not so sure about will suddenly burst forth in your mind like the second coming of "blue album" Weezer. I find myself listening on headphones, mouthing the lyrics and bobbing my head while standing on a crowed subway platform, collecting strange looks from the people around me. It is that much fun. Better than Mass Romantic.