- On their seventh album, Whiteout Conditions, The New Pornographers provide eleven songs of the same catchy, immaculately produced indie-pop that they've been releasing since their debut way back at the turn of the millenium. Despite this being the first Pornographers record to not feature co-songwriter and vocalist Dan Bejar (of Destroyer fame), main Pornographer AC Newman picks up any slack, as ever ably assisted by his vocal foil and not-so-secret weapon, Neko Case.

Opener Play Money drops us right into Whiteout Conditions bright, colourful guitar-pop, setting up the template for most of the rest of the album. Tasteful synths fill in any sonic gaps that appear between the chugging guitars, while Case purrs in the centre of it all. As with much of the record, there's a kind of krautrock vibe to the song, a relentless groove that sometimes sacrifices dynamics for continual forward motion. Single High Ticket Attractions contains hooks-aplenty, with Newman's voice taking centre stage while Case's twists and dances around the margins of the song, always threatening to take the spotlight. It's a dynamic the band have used to great effect throughout their life, and on Conditions they deploy the trick just enough for it to have maximum bang-for-buck without dulling its impact. Elsewhere, Darling Shade provides more of that rolling rock punch paired with Case's vocal strength; Colosseums combines fuzz bass riffs with a slightly wistful, bittersweet feel (and also manages to add in the word 'soothsayer' in the lyrics), while closer Avalanche Alley cranks up both the tempo and atmospherics.

Throughout the melodies and hooks are placed front and centre, and the hit-to-miss ratio is as high as it is on any other Pornographers record (that is, pretty high). With Whiteout Conditions, Newman and co stick to the old adage 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it', and it pays off as well as it ever has. There are some cool little tweaks here and there (for example, the way that Second Sleep samples the two vocalists' voices to create a cool little instrumental hook that swirls around the listener), but for the most part the record provides exactly what you'd expect from a New Pornographers record, perhaps leaning a little bit more on the band's straight-up pop side at slight expense of their more sparse, downbeat excursions on previous albums. Given the band's pop track record, that's no bad thing. The New Pornographers' music is always fun and exciting, while still feeling substantial and meaningful. In the right hands, pop music doesn't have to be fluff.

Cameron Smith.