The Weakerthans - Reunion Tour

With four years since their last release, I began scribbling down ideas for a eulogy. “When I first met The Weakerthans,” I would say to a flower-filled room full of mourners, chins quivering, hands consoling other hands, “they were such a talented group of young knucks. There is nothing more tragic than an untimely death.”

But alas, the good word was out.

I was driving home. It was late summer, the windows were down. Robert Siegel was on the radio interviewing some guru about the economy, or the job market, or something, when he announced the next segment: his plans to talk to John Samson, songwriter and front man for a band called The Weakerthans... Wait. What?

Could this be?

Did I hear him correctly?

Was All Things Considered really going to interview John Samson from The Weakerthans? Why would they do that? They’re just a little band from Canada. What do they have to do with Darfur or net neutrality? And they haven’t put out a c.d. in years… wait a minute. I rolled the windows up and turned up the volume to ensure maximum audibility.

I’m sure the interview was great. I’m sure Siegel asked some thought-provoking, Siegelesque questions (although I can’t actually picture him preparing for the interview, which would inevitably entail actually listening to The Weakerthans). I didn’t hear anything past Robert Siegel’s introduction, during which he (triumphantly, before a roaring crowd – in my mind) announced The Weakerthans’ status as a conscious, functioning entity whose latest creation would be available to the public (me) for purchase on September 25^th – less than a week before my birthday. And oh what a gift it would make.

“Reunion Tour” is the fourth full-length from the Winnipeg foursome – their second release on the independent-punk-rock-goliath Epitaph Records. Songwriter John Samson abandons his traditional personal narratives, and instead sings mainly in the first person from invented, yet very human, characters (save the return of his favorite feline friend).

The first track, "Civil Twilight," begins with an afflicted three-chord guitar riff, sounding like it’s been churned through the recently widowed machines of Robert Moog. But without fail, the straightforward, beautifully stripped-down sound of The Weakerthans comes pushing through. The lyrics begin with a frenzy of alliteration sung in a catchy, staggering melody: “My Confusion Corner commuters are cursing the cold away / as December tries to dissemble the length of their working day.” As the story unfolds, we learn of a brokenhearted bus driver who can usually keep his mind on his work, except during the time “between the sunset and certified darkness.” The driver’s ploys to forget his loss are foiled every day at “civil twilight,” despite his attempts to “calculate all the seconds left in the minutes” and “recite the names of provinces and Hollywood actors.” The lyrics tend to weave their way through the verses and choruses with some overlap that works to keep you listening in a strange the-next-line-has-started-before-I-have-comrehended-the-last-line kind of way. The bus driver’s thoughts somehow can’t keep up with the musical changes. But eventually he realizes he truly had time to keep up with his relationship, but let it slip away one day as the sun was setting – hence the vivid memories at dusk.

Samson’s lyrics are not only specific and calculated, but they rarely repeat themselves like the typical pop song, returning again and again to its catchy one-liner. His lyrics read more like a poem -- ever-evolving. He describes a room down to its most seemingly insignificant details, but will only reveal certain emotions of his characters. In this way adhering to Hemmingway’s iceberg theory, allowing you and me to fill in the 90 percent that lies below the surface. The cover of the album is an illustrated portrayal of a frozen lake with cracked blocks of ice floating along the surface. The lives of the characters within seem to imitate the disconnected nature of the ice, each with his or her own missing connections, alluding to an increasingly fractured and detached (perhaps post-modern) humanity.

Another standout song marks the return (and tragic departure) of Virtute the cat. On The Weakerthans previous album, Reconstruction Site, the song, "Plea From a Cat Named Virtute," tells the tale of a cat who has become fed up with her owner’s depression, anxiety and lack of motivation. It is told in the first person from the cat’s point of view (I know, isn’t that great?). By the end of the song, her relentless positive attitude presumably motivates her friend to change his life. Virtute’s song on the new album, "Virtute the Cat Explains Her Departure," is no less exhilarating than her first. Although, it’s ending is nothing short of devastating.

Overtop of a quiet, soft drumbeat and minimal guitar and bass, Virtute explains how the moon beckoned her away from home, and how she eventually lost her way. She reminisces about the times when she would “wait for you to arrive with kibble and a box full of beer,” and how “I’d kneed into your chest while you were sleeping.” Virtute admits that she would always return home because of a certain call, a tone, or as she puts it, “the song that you found for me.” But in the end, when she makes her way far away from home, left with only the memories of a life with her friend, the human, she sings over an increasingly climactic musical coda, heartbroken and lost… “But now I can’t remember the sound that you found for me.”

With a song about a man who sees Bigfoot, and is publicly shunned because of it; another about a farmer drinking away his time in a bar, pondering his broken marriage; and another about a lonely traveling businessman who hates his job, The Weakerthans' newest release allows us a glimpse into the lives of richly developed characters in the midst of their sorrow and pity. Some will make a turn for the better, others will not. To say the least – this album is not to be missed.

If their next release takes four years to materialize, I will wait patiently and keep my premature-eulogy-drafting materials at bay. It will be well worth the wait.

For anyone interested: www.theweakerthans.org