Good Porn

THU 8/21

Don’t get us wrong. We liked the New Pornographers from the beginning. Mass Romantic was a good album. We didn’t talk shit. But now that the New Pornographers have come out with Electric Version, we’re totally on board. Electric Version has frighteningly addictive properties. The song “The New Face of Zero and One” shows what happens when you put four great vocalists (Neko Case, Carl Newman, Dan Bejar and Kurt Dahle) in one tight outfit. Anyone capable of sitting still, tapping nary a finger through this song, simply isn’t a fan of high-quality indie rock. And if you don’t take out your air guitar to join in on the power chords, punctuating the refrain like a bat out of hell on “Ballad of a Comeback Kid,” your air guitar isn’t coming out for anything anytime soon.

What started as a side project for each of the band’s impressive members is now its own entity, fashioned according to the vision of Zumpano’s Carl Newman. “It’s been a long road,” Newman told Exclaim! magazine in November 2000. “But there were many, many naps along the way.”

Having arrived at their destination, everybody seems to be wide awake. Catch the New Pornographers at the Bottleneck (737 New Hampshire in Lawrence, 785-841-8483) on Thursday. Tickets cost $10.— Gina Kaufmann

Satisfied?

We try, and we try, and we try, and we try …

THU 8/21

Being a rock star takes good looks, good chops, and dues paid in dingy clubs and subpar recording studios. Pretending to be a rock star, however, takes a quirk of genetics and an awful lot of enthusiasm, especially when you’re imitating a sacred classic, like the Rolling Stones.

Satisfaction, as band members like to point out, is not just a cover band but also a Rolling Stones experience. A Jagger semilook-alike leads his more dissimilar bandmates through a catalog of forty years of hits Thursday at the Destination Downtown Street Party (10th and Central). The Stones might blanch at no admission fee and a performance time between 4:30 and 7 p.m., but with enough drinks, you might not even notice the difference. For details, go to www.downtownkc.org.— Christopher Sebela