The New Pornographers - Whiteout Conditions [CD]

'Cohesive.' It's a word New Pornographers founder A.C. Newman still sounds a little bit surprised to say as he describing the band's seventh album, Whiteout Conditions. It's a quality that you wouldn't necessarily intuitively associate with a so-called supergroup that, by its very collective nature, seems bound to have a good deal of stylistic variance built into the formula (or lack of it). Can an outfit built on the appeal of multiple frontmen and frontwomen develop a signature sound after all? Maybe, and maybe better late than never.