Continue as a guest

"Continue As a Guest is a more delicate and less hooky version of the New Pornographers, the most reflective they've been since 2007's underrated Challengers ... The pleasures of Continue As a Guest are worth putting in the extra work to enjoy, and after two decades of great music, Newman has earned the right to change up his style a bit".

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"The record's secret weapon (...) is saxophone player Zach Djanikian, whose unshowy contributions across the album add new textures ... Along with newfound vocal dexterity from Newman, Djanikian helps lend the record a greater sense of sonic adventurousness ... Even while the New Pornographers have an immediately recognizable sound, you can't really call any one album a retread of another. They're all good - many great - and each one somehow tweaks or branches off from the sound of the previous one. That pattern includes Continue as a Guest, which once again finds enough twists and turns to ward off "the long fade out" that Newman hints at in the title track".

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"The New Pornographers are something of a rock unicorn; a Vancouver indie supergroup formed in the late-'90s, they have not only retained most of their core players but operated at a consistently high level of quality for almost a quarter-century ... While 'Continue as a Guest' may not have the immediacy of career standouts like 'Twin Cinema' or even 'Brill Bruisers', it succeeds more subtly on its own terms and begs for repeated listens".

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