I thought that Thursday night's New Pornographers show could have been better if the band had allowed all of its talented members to perform at least one song each from their solo careers, instead of just strictly New Pornographers' material. Neko Case could have sung something from, say, Middle Tornado, and A.C. Newman something from Shut Down the Streets. Most especially, it seemed almost negligent to have Dan Bejar on stage and not perform any Destroyer songs.
Throughout the show, Kathryn Calder kept very quiet over on the right side of the stage, mostly singing backup behind AC Newman's voice. Many people may not even have noticed her, focusing their attention instead on Case over on the left side or Newmman and Behar at center stage, but I would have loved to have heard Arrow or So Easily Fooled from Calder's 2010 album, Are You My Mother?
Somehow,
Are You My Mother? came into my possession a few years ago, and while I didn't have high expectations for it at first for some reason or the other (maybe that title), it fell into heavy rotation on my CD player and eventually the songs on the album came to be among some of my all-time favorites. Since the album was in the rotation mix with a bunch of other CDs (my player holds 50) and I wasn't that familiar with it at first, I had assumed every time
Castor and Pollux came on that it was actually one of Allo Darlin's better songs (I'm glad I didn't call out for it when they played at 529
last month).
Calder's TED lecture, where she discusses her mother's struggle with ALS (she recorded Are You My Mother? while caring for her), is at the top of this post, and she also performs her songs Turn a Light On starting at 09:14, Arrow (12:38), and Slip Away (15:55), Several members of The New Pornographers appear in the film clip featured in the lecture.
I'm hoping that her current tour with The New Pornographers doesn't burn her out on the road, but instead inspires her to do a tour of her own, preferably with a stop here in the American Southeast.
