The New Pornographers are a predominately Canadian indie rock group formed in 1997 in Vancouver, British Columbia. Their sound is highly influenced by that of such power pop bands as The Cars and Cheap Trick; their songs, however, are generally of a greater melodic and harmonic complexity. A.C. Newman, who writes most of the band's material, has said, "When I seriously started to try to write songs, my main influences were, like, Burt Bacharach, Jim Webb, and Brian Wilson. Those were the guys I kinda looked at their music and went, 'What the hell are they doing here?' I was just fascinated by the structures and the harmonics." The melody of the first and eponymous track on their second album Electric Version, for instance, begins with an arpeggiated diminished triad --- a rare and strange opening flourish for a pop song.
The band has released three albums to date: Mass Romantic ( 2000), Electric Version ( 2003), and Twin Cinema ( 2005).
The band members include Daniel Bejar, Kathryn Calder, Neko Case, John Collins, Kurt Dahle, Todd Fancey, Carl Newman, and Blaine Thurier. Fisher Rose also played drums on some songs in Mass Romantic.
The New Pornographers are frequently referred to as a supergroup – or an indie supergroup --- because of the following members' associations: Dan Bejar of Destroyer Kathryn Calder of Immaculate Machine. Neko Case, solo artist, also of Maow and cub John Collins of The Evaporators Kurt Dahle of Limblifter and Age of Electric Todd Fancey of Fancey Carl Newman, solo artist (as A.C. Newman), also of Superconductor and Zumpano Nora O'Connor of The Blacks and Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire Blaine Thurier, independent filmmaker