Before We Say Goodnight: 10 songs to eulogize the Weakerthans

by Nick Laugher

July 15, 2015

0

0

0

0

0

Email this article to a friend

A fittingly emotional goodbye to one of Canada's best bands.

What hapless and hopelessly lovelorn Canadians have feared for the past eight years has finally been confirmed. In the wake of a tweet from drummer, auxiliary percussionist and all-around swell guy, Jason Tait – and the dramatic radio silence for the last few years – it appears that the touchstone of sappy, sardonic, and sincere Canadiana, the Weakerthans, are finally calling it quits. Considering their last proper album was 2007’s chilly, sub-arctic masterpiece, Reunion Tour, it’s not entirely surprising. Even though they graced us with a wonderful album of songs live in Winnipeg that was an endearing, high-energy, quilted picture of their entire catalog, and backed-up endearing Ottawa folk hermit Jim Bryson on a record in 2010, their output and worldly presence had slowed to a crawl.

The Weakerthans were an interesting band. Punks liked them, because John K. Samson was on the first two Propagandhi albums, and Fallow sounded pretty ’90s punk, like a more emotionally fragile Jawbreaker. But your Dad also liked them because “Reconstruction Site” and “Benediction” both had rippin’ pedal steel, and you know, he was into that Flying Burrito Brothers shit back in the day.

I remember being in awe of their lyrics, and the fact that I could like them and still be “cool,” and “punk,” back when I was 13 or 14. Didn’t people know that they were singing about, like, feelings, and existential dread, and the solemn, stark solipsism of rural Canada and stuff? I remember seeing the video for “Psalm for the Elks Lodge Last Call” on The Punk Show on MuchMusic and losing my mind over how gorgeous it was, and then losing my mind over how something like that could be on The Punk Show.

Picking just ten songs from the band’s small, but overwhelmingly gorgeous catalog is no easy feat, and left to my own devices, I probably just would have included everything. Many people would just say, “the entirety of Reconstruction Site,” and leave it at that. The Weakerthans were a witty, charming, beguiling, loveable, sincere, and incredibly talented band that never committed a song to record that wasn’t staggeringly beautiful. They were torch-bearers of the weird, wonderful minutiae of this vast, bewildering country, and John K. Samson’s lyrics remain some of the most insightful, literate and emotional expositions of the Canadian spirit to ever be written.

10. Benediction

With poetic, quasi-spiritual lyrics about the end of all things, weeping pedal steel guitar, and the wiry bray of Canadian songstress Sarah Harmer, it’s hard not to instantly fall in love with “Benediction.” One of the last songs on their 2003 magnum opus, Reconstruction Site, that powerful outro-bridge has some of the most emotional and heart-wrenching lyrics Samson ever penned. “But our intentions were intangible and sweet / sick with simple math and shy discoveries/ piled up against our impending defeat.”

9. Bigfoot

Samson was always good with character songs. He did a wonderful job of painting the picture of someone, and then inhabiting the role – musing about specifics, expounding on intricacies. “Bigfoot” sees him living the life of a tormented sasquatch hopeful, Bobby Clarke. Clarke was the driver of the Nelson Channel ferry in Norway House, Manitoba, and was infamous for capturing a video of an alleged bigfoot sighting in 2005, and quickly became the laughing stock of the province. The song perfectly captures a mixture of bitter resentment, tentative hopefulness and crippling shame, with sparse acoustic guitar, swirling, stark ambience and Samson’s fragile, resigned statement of, “when the visions that I see believe in me.”

8. One Great City

It was hard not to put this higher, and it was also hard not to leave this off, because it’s so ubiquitous and definitive. What is there left to say that hasn’t been said about the Weakerthans’ elegy to Winnipeg? It’s a beautifully constructed portrait of a much-ignored, lonely and isolated part of the country, and it pretty much became the city’s anthem the moment it was written. Between the staggeringly tongue-in-cheek, love/hate exploration of hometown identity and that wry, sardonic refrain of “I hate Winnipeg,” that everyone can’t help but belt out when they hear it, it’s hard to deny the power of “One Great City.”

7. Pamphleteer

A metaphor for a metaphor about a metaphor. “Pamphleteer” uses images and tropes from canvassing for communism as a metaphor for canvassing for someone’s love, which is actually a metaphor for striving for change and acceptance and happiness in the world. Or so I’ve been told. Regardless of how deep you want to go into this song, the lilting, flighty arrangement and silky, dreamy guitar paired with Samson getting away with lines like, “I walk this room in time to the beat of the Gestetner, contemplate my next communique,” with a savage, heartbreaking honesty is almost unbelievable. A quintessential song to be hopelessly in love and sad to – the amount of times I’ve cried while listening to this song is remarkable and troubling.

6. Leash

Fallow is an album that doesn’t get a lot of love. It’s understandable, because when a band has two absolutely perfect albums – both Reconstruction Site and Left and Leaving, respectively – in their oeuvre, it’s hard to give anything else the time of day. However, “Leash” is one of the most bizarre, angular and interesting songs on Fallow, and it stands above most of the straight-ahead, early ’90s influenced punk and downtempo acoustic stuff on the album. It hinted at the potential for experimentation and flitting from genre to genre that the Weakerthans would explore in a big way on subsequent albums, and you get to hear Samson sing the hilarious and shocking line, “Had one of those days when you want to try heroin, drunk driving, some form of soft suicide.”

5. Without Mythologies

On an album with arguably better songs, “Without Mythologies” always gets shoved into a corner because it’s kind of a weird, Allen Ginsberg and Dylan-esque exploration of melodic spoken word. Lyrically, it’s one of the most powerful and well-written Weakerthans songs ever penned, and musically it’s rhythmic, hypnotic and captivating. A weird, chromatic, walk-down guitar riff paired with what either sounds like tympani or bizarrely tuned toms, matched with quaint, sappy lines that will make you want to tug your heart out of your chest.

“You said, ‘True meaning would be dying with you,’ and though I wanted to, I did not smile.”

It’s a wonderfully macabre painting of unrequited love, longing, self-discovery, sadness and everything in-between.

4. Psalm For the Elks Lodge Last Call

If there were any song that could sum up the heartbreaking sincerity of the Weakerthans, it would be this one. It’s hard to pinpoint just what’s being eulogized and toasted on this song, whether it’s a metaphor for camaraderie and community, or just Samson inhabiting the tired soul of an Elks Lodge member for a short amount of time, painting a picture of stoic old age. What’s certain is that Stephen Carroll’s weeping guitar and Samson’s musings about chit chat like the weather and the ball game meander around Jason Tait’s locked-in groove in a way that’s weightless and wonderful before breaking down into a floating wander, sailing off into the ether.

3. Manifest / Hospital Vespers / Past-Due

It’s impossible to choose one of these three thematic sonnets that so nicely frame Reconstruction Site. A triptych of songs that explore the wonder, loneliness and weirdness of terminal illness, from the stir-crazy actions like yelling into heating vents expecting an answer, to the cold solemnity of poring over books about Edward Hopper in the arctic, to the harsh and beautiful acceptance of the terror and emptiness of death. With little melodic nods and winks that tie them all together, this triptych is a wounded, vulnerable look at the human condition, and the backbone of the unabashed honesty and fragile beauty of Reconstruction Site.

“Give what you can to comfort this / plain fear you can’t extinguish or dismiss.”

2. Left and Leaving

This song has soundtracked some of the weirdest moments of my life, from being dumped by my first girlfriend, to playing an open mic in Canmore, Alberta and singing this song as a duet with some guy I’ve never met, to drinking scotch at 1pm in a sweltering hot Montreal apartment after being fired. I feel like in all my listening to this song, I’ve still only scratched the surface of what there is to unpack here. I’m not sure whether it’s the heart-wrenching vocal melody, Samson’s soft, downtrodden delivery, or the cripplingly mundane, yet absolutely breathtaking lyrics about sidewalks, broken glass, stained carpets and the tenuousness of memories, but there’s a haunting, almost mythical sadness to this song. It’s an ever-present, deep and meaningful sadness, and one that pervades the band’s entire catalog, yet it’s never touched on so beautifully and fully as it is in this song.

“Duct-tape and soldered wires / new words for old desires / and every birthday card I threw away.”

1. Time’s Arrow

John K. Samson may be the only person to be able to take something as heady, dense and academic as a Martin Amis novel and distill it into a song without any hint of pretension or irony. In the novel, a German holocaust doctor ages backwards, reliving his entire life in reverse, with the book narrated by a secondary character – his consciousness, presumably. In a similar vein, the song is an ode to mortality – an exploration of tiny, meaningless life events, the ticking of seconds, the maddening collection of good and bad choices we all accrue. It’s an exhumation of time as the deliverer of good news, the thief of youth and prosperity, the chemist of fate, and ultimately, the destroyer of all things.

It’s an admission of that existential guilt we all feel, and the acceptance of the pervasive, nagging fact that we’d do it all over again if we could just turn around. If we could just have one more chance, if we could just know what we know now. Sadly, going back just means repeating the same mistakes we made, knowing better but helpless to change anything, prisoner to time’s arrow.

“Pulled along in the tender grip of watches and ellipses / small request / could we please turn around?”

While they may be gone, the Weakerthans carved a cute, witty little heart into our collective tree, and we’ll always look back fondly on that wild, wide-eyed love affair we had with them.

Nick Laugher has never been to Winnipeg, but he’s on Twitter @largiantribune

Tags: Music, Cancon, News, The Weakerthans

0

0

0

0

0

Email this article to a friend