Carl Newman was on an unstoppable tear — an all-time NBA Jam “HE’S ON FIRE” power-pop onslaught. His band the New Pornographers had exploded out of Vancouver with their high-powered, ultra-catchy 2000 debut album Mass Romantic, becoming an underground sensation and somewhat of a supergroup in reverse (as the New Pornos further bolstered Neko Case’s already ascendant alt-country career, shined a much brighter spotlight on oblique poet-crank Dan Bejar’s eternally evolving Destroyer project, and confirmed Newman as a generational talent in his own right). The band’s second album, 2003’s Electric Version, kept that momentum going with another set of turbo-charged pop-rock tracks that made impressive use of the group’s multi-vocalist arsenal. And with The Slow Wonder, his 2004 solo debut album as A.C. Newman, he’d delivered some of the finest songs of his career, tunes that proved he could thrive both inside and outside the New Pornographers’ blown-out template.