A.C. Newman - The Slow Wonder (2004)

"he was tied to the bed with a miracle drug in one hand/in the other was a great lost novel..." - The Miracle Drug

When Mass Romantic, the first album from Canada's New Pornographers, came out it was, like, the summer of 2001 I think. I remember rocking out to it in my living room through the Sony PlayStation and the TV 'cause we didn't have any portable CD players. The doors and windows were open and I was drinking gin and tonics. My Slow Descent Into Alcoholism was still ironic. I was heavily into power pop and anything that had random syllables like "ba," "fa," or "la" for lyrics. It was all the crumbling remnants of the twee period I'd gone through during the last year, year and a half.

Then a couple of planes crashed into The Two Towers, inadvertently causing my house to burn down and, by the time Electric Version, their follow-up album, arrived, so had my need for power pop and The New Pornographers.

Fast-forward a few years and I'm sitting at the poker table chasing a King high flush with one more card still to be dealt. Needless to say I'm on edge with all my money on the line and Jason yelling at me in one ear and Trey in the other. There's some kinda spazzy hardcore playing and I can't fucking think. Then Jeff changes the music. The A.C. Newman solo album that had been out for a year and a half maybe and which I'd heard once, if at all, and wrote off. More of the same. This time it was manna from heaven. I felt relaxed, placed my bet and let the final card come. The Ace. My King high flush became an Ace high. I had the nuts. Bets were made and I took 'em all.

For ten minutes, The Slow Wonder was the greatest album ever made.