Last Saturday night Seattlest was shivering outside the Paramount waiting for the friend-with-the-tickets to show up for the New Pornographers/Belle and Sebastian show. From our vantage point, we watched as the doors opened and the line poured into the Paramount, a standing wave forming a few feet before the marquee, as people held up their cell phones to take a picture in case of massive cerebral trauma rendering them unable to remember where they were later on. more ›

The Matador Records website announced a New Pornographers / Belle and Sebastian tour last week and we can't say we're ecstatic about the pairing. Sure, we went through a very brief B&S phase at one point a few years ago. We're not proud of it, but we can admit it. Finally. And we suppose that we can see what Matador is trying to do. Twin Cinema is an excellent attempt at a great album and due to our relative proximity to British Columbia we're very aware of that, as a region. Probably we're in the minority, nationally, though, and we suspect that Matador thinks it should be selling a lot better than it is. And they'd be right. So attach the Pornographers to the warhorse of their stable, the cash cow, the begging-craigslist-for-tickets, probably-playing-the-Paramount band and see what kind of exposure they can get. We're just not sure that fans of the one can necessarily be cross pollinanted into being fans of the other. more ›

Seattlest loves the New Pornographers. We may have made claims to the contrary in the past, but our informal polling method (four Seattlest contributors at their last Showbox performance) shows they have strong support from our staff. That not one of us deigned to write the show up is something else entirely. Too many cooks, maybe. more ›

The third album by mighty morphin' power-poppers the New Pornographers, Twin Cinema, goes on sale tomorrow. For Seattlest, this is like Beatlemania meets Pottermania, except that Pornomania likely won't be nuts enough to inspire a Robert Zemeckis film. more ›