And maybe that’s our appeal: a band that should not exist, yet we still exist.” “Maybe this isn’t our fate, we should not exist, but we’ve willed it into being. “Sometimes I feel like we had to fight destiny to get here,” Carl Newman says, tongue firmly in cheek. The NPs might be the band that best sums up their era’s most noble rock virtues: independence, humor, unflagging creative commitment. Result: a string of great albums, right up to 2019’s The Morse Code of Brake Lights.

But the band keeps mutating through the years, a rotating cast of characters with Newman as bemused ringleader. Mass Romantic comes out of nowhere to become everyone’s indie cup of tea in Y2K. So he recruits buddies like Bejar and Case, both already indie cult heroes in their own right. You couldn’t make this story up: Vancouver songwriting wizard Carl Newman tries to hit the big time with his Nineties band Zumpano, but their albums flop. It includes a bonus seven-inch single of “Letter,” which made Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 Greatest Debut Singles. Mass Romantic is getting a deluxe reissue as part of Matador’s Revisionist History series, including a limited-edition vinyl LP out on Dec. 'Silence of the Lambs': The Complete Buffalo Bill Story

(Most of the dates sold out immediately.) Old friends are back on board: Destroyer frontman Dan Bejar, who hasn’t played with the NPs in years, and alt-country virtuoso Neko Case. They’re doing two-night stands, playing two of their classic albums in full - Mass Romantic the first night, Twin Cinema the second.

29 at Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock, New York. The New Pornographers are celebrating their anniversary with a hotly awaited tour, which kicks off Nov. Yet somehow, they turned into one of the 21st century’s longest-running all-star bands. Everybody figured it was a one-off fluke. It blew up into a word-of-mouth sensation, with gems like “Letter From an Occupant” and “The Slow Descent Into Alcoholism.” Three lead singers, 12 warped tunes, a ragtag team of rock misfits. The beloved Canadian indie-pop savants made their debut 21 years ago with Mass Romantic, a low-budget classic full of eccentric guitar tunecraft and perverse wit. There’s no music story like the saga of the New Pornographers.

A thousand years karaoke