The New Pornographers

The New Pornographers formed in 1997 in Vancouver, British Columbia, and became one of the most critically and popularly cherished indie pop bands of the next decade for displaying a keen affection for great power pop icons of the '70s. The rotating membership is overseen by primary songwriter Carl Newman, though it has included a number of other marquee collaborators including Chicago alt country darling Neko Case and Dan Bejar who fronts his own cultishly popular act, Destroyer. If the main influences sighted by the band were Burt Bacharach and Brian Wilson, the quick melodic turns, clever lyrics, and structural complexity evoke other modern power pop bands like Sloan and Superdrag.