The Weakerthans

Fast-rising Toronto-Winnipeg rockers deliver a killer third album

One of Canadian music's best-kept secrets has just become a lot more visible. Over the space of five years and two previous albums, Winnipeg-based punk-rooted rockers The Weakerthans earned a devoted following inside and outside Canada, but traveled under the radar in terms of mainstream media and music industry attention.
Not that the band fretted over this. Their fiercely independent spirit and political idealism meant they would have rejected any attempts at seduction by major record labels anyway. Instead, they put out their albums, 1998's Fallow and 2000's Left And Leaving on G7 Welcoming Committee, a collectively run Winnipeg label.
When Tandem interviewed guitarist Stephen Carroll in 2000, he jokingly commented "Watch me put my foot in my mouth when we get a big record contract!" Well, the band hasn't sold their soul to a multi-national, but their recent deal with top U.S. indie label Epitaph is poised to boost their career significantly (Sweden's Burning Hearts label handles the European distribution).
The group's just-released third album, Reconstruction Site, certainly deserves the increased push it will get. The Weakerthans have long been this scribe's favourite Canadian band, and the new record just confirms that view. It defies easy categorization, though 'punk-folk' is a phrase commonly used. The songs are rooted in the poetically imaginative lyrics of singer John K. Samson, while his three comrades help frame them in subtle yet sometimes aggressive musical settings.
Bassist John P. Sutton told Tandem recently that "I am proud of the album. I think we achieved what we wanted. This time, we worked really hard in pre-production, recording a lot of the songs in our practice space, and seeing how things fit together. Then when we brought in the producer, Ian Blurton, we made some more changes. Ian really improved the songs as well. By the time we got to the studio, these were songs we knew really well, so we went in there and banged it off."
Toronto rock hero Blurton (Change Of Heart, Blurtonia) deserves plenty of credit for the impressive sound of Reconstruction Site. The fact that he manned the soundboard at The Weakerthans' recent CD release party at the El Mocambo shows his commitment to the band.
"Having an objective ear is very important," notes Sutton. "Ian is a great producer, and he has a knack of bringing out energy. We always have a lot of fun hanging out with him." At Blurton's suggestion, ace American producer Adam Kasper (Foo Fighters, Queens Of The Stone Age) was recruited to mix the record, and the result is the group's best-sounding record yet.
The Weakerthans trump card remains the evocative lyrics of Samson. These still amaze Sutton, who explains "I've been a fan of his lyrics since he was a teenager and he played me a demo tape with just acoustic guitar. He has great ideas, great words, so simple yet so complicated and to the point. At some of the lyrics, I still shake my head - 'Why was he thinking about an Arctic explorer meeting Michel Foucault?' And writing a song from the perspective of a cat ["Plea From A Cat Named Virtute"]. Where did this come from?" Drugs, perhaps? "That is for him to answer," laughs Sutton.
The songwriting process is a varied one. "Sometimes John will come in, start strumming and singing, and we will catch on and play along with it. Other times he may just have a melody idea and we will start fooling around with chord changes, feeling it out and he will throw in some random words, and then we will finish the music collectively. It sometimes starts with a lyrical idea, then sometimes that is the last idea."
Sutton is already noticing the group's audience expand in both range and size. "We all came from a punk rock background [Samson was in the popular Propagandhi], so we understand how to sell punk records and have a punk rock tour. Now we seem to be getting to more people than just the indie rock and punk rock kids. I think that as this album gets out more it will become more accessible.
"We certainly don't want to ghettoize ourselves and only sell records to punk rock people. We want anybody that will like it to enjoy it."
Reconstruction Site is now out on Epitaph. A local date for The Weakerthans will be announced shortly.

Publication Date: 2003-09-07
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=3122