New York Magazine published an interview with A. C. Newman right before Challengers was released. We completely missed it. If you did too, you can read it here.

We were among the lucky few whom saw The New Pornographers last night play the second of two secret shows at the Bowery Ballroom. The NP gang seemed to be in pretty good spirits with lots of banter in between songs (especially AC — congrats). Well, except for Neko. The Bowery Ballroom sound crew struggled repeatedly to fix Neko Case’s ear monitor. Neko, you might have felt a little self-conscious, but we honestly can’t imagine why. You sang better than everyone in the room even without being able to hear the rest of the band. We love you.

Also we’d like to say how impressed we were by Kathryn Calder. Previously we’d had dismissed her as Knock-off Neko or, in our jealously, called her The Nepotistic Niece, but last night we were honestly impressed with her singing. Kat, the first time we saw you at the Brooklyn Bandshell almost two years ago, we resented you. We admit. We can be petty sometimes, but last night we could see how you had grown into a great performer.

Guys, despite the bitchy bloggers standing around us nay saying and critizing you for being just too damn good, but not good enough, we want to say we love you enthusiastically and we can’t wait to see you in October.

Now let’s talk about the raison d’etre for this post and yesterday.

We really love Challengers. We’ve had it for months and had a lot of time to listen to it. (Yes, we bought a copy of the album: you better do the same.) We think it’s great like we said before. We don’t care what Pitchfork says. Their review is only evidence of the growing irrelevance of Pitchfork. Pitchfork loves to build up their idols just to tear them down. The review isn’t even about the music. The review is about comparing The NPs to their collective past as a group and as individuals. The album is great. It has a lot of emotional movements that can’t be expressed with The NP energy turned up to 11. Rob, baby, you’re a 5.9 at best. Oh, and boring.

So we found this really cool discussion of Challenger on Matador’s website wherein AC Newman gives some interesting details about the album as a whole and each song.

From Challengers:

“Challengers”

Oh yeah, Vampire Weekend opened for The NPs.

VW isn’t our style, but a lot of people really, really liked them. We were frankly surprised to see people singing along. We don’t assume we know everything about music, like some other music nerds (Rob). So, uh, good job Vampire Weekend.

From Vampire Weekend:

“Cap Cod Kwassa Kwassa”

Finally, some jackass stole our camera. Our camera phone pictures are sad. Check out Gaelenh’s!

The New Pornographers are releasing their latest album, Challengers, next Tuesday August 21st. We are super excited. We’ve already ordered our copy of the album through the Buy Now, Get Now program.

Yesterday, the BNGN people sent out an email they were selling tickets to a secret show The New Pornographers were performing on Monday August 20th at the Bowery Ballroom. Unfortunately, we weren’t one of the lucky bastards to get tickets despite our best efforts to buy them. The link was down before we ever arrived at thenewpornographers.ducatking.com.

But today the BNGN people released 50 more tickets to the show. They said a technical meltdown delayed the email and we received it after all the tickets were sold. We didn’t get one of those 50 tickets either. But today’s email also included a link to tickets to a show on Tuesday at Ticketmaster. Jump on it. Tickets were still available the last time we looked.

It should be a great show — it’s the night their CD is released.

We’ve heard the album in its entirety. It’s a great album. It’s more mellow than their previous energetic work. So on a scale of 1 to 10 they’ve shifted from an 11 to like an 8. We love it. We can’t wait to see Neko Case and A. C. Newman and the rest of the gang.

From Challengers:

“My Rights Versus Yours”

(download)

“Myriad Harbor”

(download)