Challengers by TEH NEW PORNOGRAPHERS

I was going to write an actual, honest-to-God review of this for the first issue of The Quill, but since the deadline is tomorrow and I still haven't gotten in contact with the Arts editor, I'm not going to bother. I'll be sure to get into every other issue afterwards, though, as once the year starts I will have easy access to the office and those that inhabit it.

Challengers is a different album from TNP. There's only two songs here that I would say fit in with their past work, and even they use a slightly different style. But you know what? I applaud them for doing something different, and successfully at that.

Like all their work, the album flows perfectly. There are really no songs that I would skip on regular listen-throughs. The lyrics are still eccentric and fun, and the singing is still smooth as ever. They are just trying something slightly less bombastic, and using a much greater variety of instruments and composition styles as before. The 5th song, 'All The Things that Go To Make Heaven & Earth' has a pretty rockin' piccolo in the background. Yes, a rockin' piccolo.

It seems like a lot of critics are down on this album because it's different. It certainly is different, but I love it all the same. I'd say it's worth picking up, for a rockin' piccolo and more.

The Weakerthans new album is coming out in a month, and they're experimenting, too. Can't wait for that one.

*****

In other news, I finished my first comic script and sent it for review to my collaborator. It took nearly a month to hammer that thing into first draft completion, and it's more of a filler thing setting up the motus operandi of the antagonists. If there's one thing I don't honestly know will go over well with potential readers this early, it's two issues of talking heads (which pretty much describes what we wrote to a tee), but we'll see.

That is, if we ever get to the point of being able to publish this monstrosity, which would involve finding an artist and inker, or an artist/inker. Not just an artist/inker/artistinker, but one that would be willing to take a dual-nerd dictatorship, and for very little pay. It's too bad neither of us ever took a complete pursuit of art, because that would have taken out the middle man entirely. So it goes.