Track Listing

1. Civil Twilight
2. Hymn of the Medical Oddity
3. Relative Surplus Value
4. Tournament of Hearts
5. Virtute the Cat Explains Her Departure
6. Elegy from Gump Worsley
7. Sun in an Empty Room
8. Night Windows
9. Bigfoot!
10. Reunion Tour
11. Utilities

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9463 in Music
• Released on: 2007-09-25
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.com
This Canadian quartet has always excelled at mixing pop hooks with slice-of-life lyrics that earn comparisons to short story masters like Grace Paley and Raymond Carver. The curiously titled Reunion Tour (four years between albums but they never disbanded) ups the lyrical ante ever more with contagious tunes like "Hymn of the Medical Oddity" and "Relative Surplus Value." Not to mention "Tournament of Hearts," easily the best song ever written about the Olympic sport of curling. Musically, if you could imagine the Mountain Goats crossed with Death Cab--or even an older, slower, rocking-er Decembrists more in love with life itself than the dictionary--you'd not be too off the mark. Recorded over the course of a winter week and a half in a Manitoba factory during its off hours, the album sounds surprisingly warm, lush, and vigorous. Give these songs time and they'll flower in your head, sprouting movies based on lines like "where the radio resounds in Doppler traffic," itself inspired by an Edward Hopper painting, but you don't need to know any of that to dig it, of course. --Mike McGonigal

Customer Reviews

Not as good as "Reconstruction Site", but still better than most
The Weakerthans are great, but this isn't as good as the previous record. I still recommend it.

Smitsom
Smitsom means "infectious" or "catching" in the danish laguage and that's how I feel about this album. I rated it so hghly because the more I play it, the more I play it. There are two forces at war on this album: the ineloquently nasal indie style whining voice of the lead singer (is it John Samson?) and his lyrical use of the english language (I am just assuming he writes the songs). Alas, the sum of the two is far greater than the addition of the parts and for this reason I have become infected, destined to play it over and over again until the tray on my 10-year old Marantz CD player finally falls off.

Were you a Rangers fan? Did you follow "the Gumper"? Do you remember him endlessly sliding back and forth in front of the cage when the play was at the other end of the rink cleaning the crease as he relentlessly if not pathologically tried to tuck his jersey into his pants?

You do?

Then listen to this album. It doesn't hurt if you grew up in Flin Flon!

Several musical gems
At best, I might be described as a casual fan of the Weakerthans. Usually I need my music to have some more punch to it, but when I am feeling introspective or low, this is the soundtrack to my mood. So, when I saw a new album had come out, I was not sure if I wanted to fork up the money for something that was so melancholy. Luckily, I did.

The first track starts off with a bit of energy, but it ultimately is not as satisfying as some of the other songs on the album. The Weakerthans shine not when they are full of vigor, but when they are brooding over loss. There are three songs on this album that have just stuck into my mental tape recorder and continue to replay over and over: Virtute the Cat, Sun in an Empty Room, and Night Windows.

On all three of these songs, the Weakerthans show amazing song writing abilities. On Virtute the Cat, the song breaks into what feels like it is going to be a heart breaking chorus and half finishes on the third line making it imperative to listen to it again to satisfy the music itch. Sun in an Empty Room, the number one song for me on the album, defies normal song structure with the reoccurring title phrase bleeding from the verse, to the chorus, and ultimately into the extremely sad conclusion in the bridge. Night Windows has an excellent round of stack vocals, each filled with emotional sincerity.

The Elegy of Gump Worsley is an instant skip whenever I come to it. Some of the other songs are brooding, but they feel more throwaway without a hook to ground them. The lyrics throughout the album, though, are some of the best ever put to music.