New Pornographers leader and full-fledged power-pop genius A.C. Newman's third solo album is the punkest thing he's ever done – and also the quietest, the sweetest, the subtlest, simultaneously the most emotionally fraught and spiritually contented. It begins with a delicately blissful song about being "in a strange in-between space where the things I had always strived for – perfect happiness, success, being the best at what I do – were suddenly not nearly as important as just holding onto what I had," as he puts it, and ends with the saddest, most direct and heartbreaking song he's ever written.