Pitchfork Forkcast: New Music: The New Pornographers: "My Rights Versus Yours" [MP3]

New Music: The New Pornographers: "My Rights Versus Yours" [MP3]

The laws may have changed, but they can still be a drag. "The courts knew this and nothing more," Carl Newman sings sweetly before the dropping title phrase like divorce papers on "My Rights Versus Yours", the advance mp3 from the New Pornographers' forthcoming Challengers (out in August on Matador). It's a slow-building song that begins with lite-FM guitars and Newman's double-tracked voice, soon joined by Neko Case's gorgeous harmonies and a more typically New-Pornographic power-pop guitar chug. Except Newman recently described the band's music as less power-pop than "power-folk". It's pretty clear to see why, as the song concludes with overlapping lines about "a new empire in rags" and "the truth in one free afternoon," bittersweet and pure.

MP3: > The New Pornographers: "My Rights Versus Yours"
[from Challengers; due 8/21/07 on Matador]