Neko Case
The New Pornographers - Use It
It’s been forever since I’ve listened to this band (their last cd kind of made me forget about them), and I’m remembering just how much I love them. I remember when I was a bit younger and Twin Cinema came out, I tried playing these songs for everyone, and a lot of my friends didn’t really get it. Given, we were younger then, arguing about whether Green Day or Weezer was better (an argument I think Weezer won a couple years later, once we collectively rediscovered Pinkerton), and looking back, I kind of wonder how they could dismiss something as poppy as this. But that doesn’t matter: when I got this cd for my birthday, it was the greatest day. I was sure I was the only kid in my tiny town that knew them. I’m not sure if I was right or wrong (probably wrong), but that didn’t matter. This was my band, that I discovered in an issue of Blender (a friend of mine used to get it, and he eventually made a collage out of all the covers behind a door in his house). While not my first entry into the independent world of rock, they definitely opened a lot of doors for me. From there I discovered Matador, and from there…everything. Which is just a long and drawn-out way of saying how much I love this band, and how they helped make me into a punk.
