These days US music snobs have found that the wind is blowing south. Our ears perk up every time we hear the word Canada. The days of laughing at Canadian rockers like Bryan Adams and Celine Dion have been replaced by an undying admiration for our northern friends musical contributions. Artists like Broken Social Scene, Arcade Fire, and Feist have almost become a substitute for ice hockey and Molson XXX as the canucks proudest export. Currently, there is another band that is looking to catch a gust of the powerful Canadian wind.
On their fourth full-length album, the Weakerthans --a quirky folk-punk quartet from Winnipeg-- certainly wouldn’t mind joining the ranks of Canada’s finest. With Reunion Tour the band falls somewhere between Bryan Adams and the Arcade Fire in the Canadian rock hierarchy.
Leading up to this record, many had been wondering why this band wasn’t bigger already. With hooks that stick with you for days, comical videos and ironic lyrics, they do have a lot to offer MTV and radio listeners. As a matter of fact, after one listen, you might be surprised that these boys have not yet made it on your 16-year-old cousins’ ipod. For now they are not. Predictably, as soon as they get there, quite possibly on this album, us music snobs will say they are crap.
Presently, indie rockers are digging these cats.
But timing, as they say, can be everything and the band has missed the mark when they could have cashed in, as the blog world can now make you a semi-star overnight. Although, maybe they don’t want to impress critics anymore and they’re shooting for the big time. Either way, something is different on this album. For starters, genres like pop and punk, which rarely sit comfortably next to each other, have been allowed to snuggle closely for three consecutive Weakerthans records. Not so this time. Typically, singer John K. Samson’s lyrics come off clever and funny, but on Reunion Tour, if you delve deeper, words like pretentious and presumptuous may come to mind. Vocally, Samson resembles Ben Gibbard and at times on this album, a little too much. Melody is the LP’s strong point, these songs will still stick in your head, and even if you are certain this album isn’t for you, you must acknowledge this. This is why they still may be heard on a local alt-rock station.
However, glimpses of the band’s artistic potential are still evident. Like the pop rocker “Tournaments of Hearts” which would not necessarily be classified dance/punk, yet you can barely keep from dancing to the “Right off, no, never, ever, never” chorus. And it’s the wonderful simplicity of “Elegy for Gump Worsley” that has you questioning why the band didn’t continue down this more creative path on the rest of the album. The song tells the story of the all-star NHL goaltender who died earlier this year. It quietly rings of once idolizing 10 year olds, now grown, who for a moment regain youth in their hero’s passing. “Tugging jersey around the beer gut, ‘I'm strictly a whiskey man’ was one of the sticks he taped up and gave to a nation of pudgy boys”.
But after these tracks most of the album falls into the mediocre category. It’s not terrible and it’s not great.
On “Relative Surplus Value” Samson sings, “So I sleep through the entire flight, don’t really wake up till the cab driver says, ‘Hey where you goin’, I forget?’” I suppose sometimes it’s easy to forget where you’re going.
|