[review 2007: honourable mentions]

For the Weakerthans it’s been a relatively straightforward progression since Left and Leaving. Reconstruction Site was the band’s first album for Epitaph, and probably the album with the widest appeal to date. The punkish guitar pop sound found itself with a little less punk and a little more pop, and the shift to character studies as lyrical subject material meant more people could relate in some way to the songs.

But for those of us who felt in their bones the desire to play on the baggage carousel or tape notes to the heavy machines like “we hope they treat you well, hope you don’t work too hard” (which, by the way, I always hoped were messages not to the operators of the machines, but to the machines themselves), Reconstruction Site was a bit of a letdown. Sure, the story of Michel Foucault and an Antarctica explorer having dinner was really funny and endearing (though the ill-advised country detour on “A New Name For Everything” balances that out), but it didn’t make up for the sense that John K. Samson was no longer really talking just to you, or about how you felt inside. Maybe this is why the Weakerthans were so popular with college crowds: they had just the right balance of literary compulsion and emotional sensitivity.

Where does Reunion Tour leave us, then? Seven years after Left and Leaving and ten after Fallow, it’d be foolish to imagine Samson would go back to writing about teenage flights of fancy or college-age heartbreak. Instead, the band adds to its catalogue of odes to Canadiana like hockey (”Elegy for Gump Worsley”), Winnipeg transit (”Civil Twilight”) and curling (”Tournament of Hearts,” a title that American commentators almost universally missed was a reference to the Canadian women’s curling championships). In that sense the Weakerthans are becoming ever so slightly like the Tragically Hip. But then the Tragically Hip never wrote a song about curling, as far as I remember. For that the Weakerthans have my everlasting gratitude (and apparently Canadian curling’s everlasting gratitude as well, if you read interviews with the band).

But gratitude doesn’t necessarily translate into love. Thankfully, Reunion Tour is an easier album to love than Reconstruction Site was. Though the Weakerthans’ sound is even tamer this time around, now just a glossier form of punk-inflected indie rock that won’t offend anyone by being too loud or too unpredictable, the band still knows the fine art of good songwriting, and there’s never a track that’s anything less than pleasant. At its best, like on “Civil Twilight” and “Tournament of Hearts,” Reunion Tour is still full of good singalongs and earworms.

If there’s a problem with the album, it’s that it’s not and never can be Left and Leaving. There’s no “My Favourite Chords,” no “Watermark,” no “Everything Must Go!” And perhaps the Weakerthans are a bit too complacent for comfort’s sake; one wonders how much longer they can stretch out their current modus operandi without making major changes to the formula. But for now, Reunion Tour will keep the Weakerthans in my good graces and even improve their standing a notch or two.