Da Capo Best Music Writing 2003 selection “City Still Breathing: Listening to The Weakerthans” (Paul Tough, Geist) described the underappreciated band’s overriding theme as “the pull of home, and its equivalent push: about leaving and coming back and deciding to stay away.” The songs are about everyday people, buildings and the weather, but their meanings are rooted squarely in forlorn nostalgia. And over time, those songs have become increasingly excellent.
John K. Samson again delivers reed-thin vocals and lyrics akin to musical high-literature on this fourth volume of folky alt-pop with a punk pedigree. Subtle details about “biting off” mittens, returning Goodwill furniture and the sound of amps thudding down stairs turn striking when fit into the big picture, whether a song concerns an empty room, a Wall Street player, a cat or curling (the quartet hails from Canada, after all). Sometimes guitars elbow to the forefront (“Tournament of Hearts,” “Relative Surplus Value”), sometimes there are more experimental turns (the spoken-word homage “Elegy for Gump Worsley”), sometimes a dusty alt-country breeze blows past (“Night Windows,” “Utilities”), and sometimes percussionist Jason Tait’s deft insertion of rolls and chimes coaxes tears from a short narrative about lost keys and missed opportunities (the title track). Each one, however, is remarkably sweet, weary, poetic, intelligent and hopelessly earnest. Forget “musician”; Samson’s true occupation is “spellbinder.”
THE WEAKERTHANS
Reunion Tour
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