Back To Beatnik

Emusic didn't have the new New Pornographers on its street date (at least in the U.S.), so I used up the thirteen August downloads I was saving for Challengers on Imperial Teen's The Hair, The TV, The Baby, and The Band, their first new album in over five years. The album title explains what the four IT members have been up to since their last release (2002's On).

The album is a near-perfect encapsulation of how the New Pornographers used to sound. I used to always confuse Imperial Teen with Imperial Drag back in the day, and couldn't remember which band was the good one. Imperial Drag was the band with Andy Sturmer of Jellyfish, so they had the more impressive pop credentials, but Imperial Teen were the one with the better songs. I'd forgotten about them until I saw the new album among emusic's batch of new releases last week, and still had them half-confused with Immaculate Machine. Too many I bands!

The initial pick to click is "Shim Sham" (which plays on imperialteen.com when you start it up), but the whole record is a lot of fun. Pitchfork's review says it's "a meta-album that downplays the pansexual exuberance with which Imperial Teen are most closely associated" but they still as pansexually exuberant as ever to these ears!