Whiteout Conditions
by The New Pornographers
  • Record Label: Concord
  • Release Date: Apr 7, 2017
User Score
7.9

Generally favorable reviews- based on 31 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 24 out of 31
  2. Mixed: 6 out of 31
  3. Negative: 1 out of 31
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  1. CriticoDubioso
    Apr 10, 2017
    5
    The New Pornographers are a band that has lost their engine.

    Kurt Dahle is one of the most imaginative drummers in the business - and Kurt is gone. This is a bigger loss overall than Dan Bejar's departure. At his best, Dahle matches Keith Moon for pumping color, surprise, and humor into his drumming. I actually think Kurt's talent is wasted in the bludgeon-rock of Age of Electric (his    The New Pornographers are a band that has lost their engine.

    Kurt Dahle is one of the most imaginative drummers in the business - and Kurt is gone. This is a bigger loss overall than Dan Bejar's departure. At his best, Dahle matches Keith Moon for pumping color, surprise, and humor into his drumming. I actually think Kurt's talent is wasted in the bludgeon-rock of Age of Electric (his long-ago, and current band), while he was perfect for elevating TNPs to something exceptionally intelligent and interesting.

    Joe Seiders as successor to Kurt Dahle is the rough equivalent of what Kenney Jones was as successor to Keith Moon: a sane, solid timekeeper who cannot, or is unwilling to, match the inventiveness and power of his predecessor. I'd go further, and say that Joe is simply the wrong drummer for TNPs, but considering the repetition and synth/dance flavor rife through the arrangements in Whiteout, I think he's exactly the sort of drummer that Carl Newman wants for his latest music.

    When Kurt quit/was thrown out of TNP, I was hoping that Jon Wurster had the time and inclination to join them. But after hearing the new album, I'm not sure how an inventive, propulsive rock drummer like Wurster could have improved Whiteout, really. Not without a different selection of songs. This album makes it seem as though after all these years, Carl has decided to excise TNP's thunderous alt rock in a bid for commercial success. And he just might find it with this turn... but he's gonna lose many of his long-term fans. Neko Case singing over a drum machine? Yikes. *There's* something we never needed to hear.

    Indeed for me, this is the first disposable Pornographers album. Carl seems determined to mutate the Pornographers from a kickass, melodic rock band into an echo of an 80s pop/dance band like (eek!) New Order, or Depeche Mode ... and that just makes me sad.    … Expand

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
78

Generally favorable reviews - based on 21 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 17 out of 21
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 21
  3. Negative: 0 out of 21
  1. Dusted Magazine
    Nov 15, 2017
    80
    The New Pornographers’’ songs have always been swift, busy little things for the most part, that’s a large part of their joy, and even if some of the more overt ebullience has been toned down here, the richly arpeggioed repetitions and steady melodic sense on display here means that, “bubblegum Krautrock” or no, this is still heady, catchy stuff.
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  2. Magnet
    Apr 14, 2017
    90
    Even in the more sedate moments, there's an underlying insistence that ties the 11-track set together in a typically neat package that sits comfortably and appropriately in one of rock's greatest band catalogs. [No. 141, p.58]
  3. Q Magazine
    Apr 12, 2017
    60
    The band seem to be pushing their hi-spec power-indie as far as it can go. [Jun 2017, p.110]
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