Mass Romantic by The New Pornographers

Mass Romantic, the 2000 debut from the New Pornographers, came out on Mint Records and introduced a Vancouver supergroup that sounded like it was having more fun than anybody else in indie rock. A.C. Newman and Dan Bejar had been writing songs for it since 1998, and the whole thing took close to three years, cut with fellow Canadian players drawn from Zumpano, the Evaporators and Destroyer, and co-produced by bassist John Collins and David Carswell.

What comes out is power pop at a sugar-rush clip: stacked voices, Neko Case soaring over the top, and choruses that tumble into one another on the title track and "Letter From an Occupant" before you've caught your breath. It never charted in Canada or the States, but the reviews were glowing enough to sell out the tour, Metacritic's tally came to 87, and Stereogum later counted it among the greatest power pop records ever made.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.