The New Pornographers
Warfield Theatre - Sep 17, 2007
review by lissanana

Saw the New Pornographers last night and definitely enjoyed it. At some point, lead singer guy got into a banter with the audience about playing some Journey music, and he jokingly commented that we couldn't tell him what to do, saying "We're not rockers, we're artists!!" Well, au contraire, they did rock. And judging by the amount of moderate headbanging, and audience members jumping up and down and screaming like teeny boppers, they rocked pretty hard.

The giant flashing sign reading "NEW PORNOGRAPHERS" added to the energy that was being thrown out on stage. They started it off high, and took a dip in the middle of the show when we started to realize that all their songs were sounding similar and they had some feedback and sound issues.

But, when the singers finally began acknowledging the audience and engaging in a little human-to-human joking around, the show picked up again and they rocked us all the way to the encore. Lead singer guy lost a lot of momentum by trying to let the audience pick the second encore song...we sat there for literally a minute while he tried to decide what to play.

Throughout, they had a very full sound, performed well, and I think the music is fantastic to start with so that helps. Neko Case was pretty impressive, although she didn't steal the spotlight which I liked. They seemed to like San Francisco, so hopefully they'll be back soon!

posted Sep 18, 2007
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