The Weakerthans Band • Page 12

I've always considered "Reconstruction Site" (the album "One Great City" is on) to be their best and most accessible, closely followed by "Reunion Tour." But there are plenty of gems on their first two albums as well!

 

Left and Leaving is probably my favorite and the most accessible. Just skip Fallow and go in order

 

left and leaving is where I started and is also coincidentally the best album of all time, so imo start there

 

yeah, Left and Leaving > Reconstruction Site > Reunion Tour > Winter Wheat, then go back and check Fallow, would be my suggested order

 

Reconstruction Site is a masterwork, Left and Leaving and Reunion Tour are excellent for stretches as well.

High points of their discography for me include “Left and Leaving”, “Reconstruction Site”, “Benediction”, “Virtute the Cat Explains Her Departure”, “Civil Twilight”, “Night Windows”, “This Is A Fire Door Never Leave Open”, “Pamphleteer”, and “Elegy for Elsabet”.

Fucking hell he’s a strong songwriter

 

Winter Wheat needed to be shaved down a little bit. Left and Leaving the song is astoundingly good. The album too but especially the song.

 

Thing is for YEARS people told me left and leaving was their most accessible and that's where I should start. I was never hooked by L&L so never got into the band. Then I decided to try Reconstruction Site and it immediately clicked. Definitely RS is the most accessible. Just catchier and less busy than L&L, though I love L&L now that I got into the band.

 

the best lyricist of our times

 

It’s here in the smallest bones. The feet and the inner ear. It’s such an enormous thing to walk and to listen.

 

I would strongly argue against this. Not only does it encapsulate most of what he had worked on in the time since the first debut, but thematically it's all linked, even if some songs arent as good as others.

 

that album is absolutely perfect

 

Ya Left & Leaving is where I started, specifically after listening to TWYs cover of “Aside” and immediately fell in love with John Ks songwriting

 

yeah John K's lyrics are, to me, some of the best if not the best of the genre. One line I think is absolutely incredible is this one on Winter Wheat, for its visual quality :
"So make a visor with your hands/squint to where you're from/a lonely line of buildings you can block out with your thumb/salute the way we tried"
It takes into account the progression of an actual gesture, and instills meaning into it : the visor-hand turning into the visually similar salute.
I'm not explaining this very well, but it makes me think of poetry in Sign Language. Some signed poetry reposes on sign play: similar-looking/similarly-placed signs that can be fluidly integrated or moved into each other to form a sort of word-play. This line feels like that.

 

John k has gotta be the one of the best songwriters I’ve ever heard

 

How random was it that Aside played over the closing credits to Wedding Crashers

Best solo track John K has done to this point is Requests, song floors me

 

repeating myself itt but this is one of the greatest songs ever, if not the greatest. the fact that this, "Fire Door" and "Everything Must Go" are on the same album... unbelievable

 

John has lots of great solo work, but “When I Write My Master’s Thesis” is still my favorite. It rocks like the best Weakerthans songs and the way it plays with the form of Bob Dylan’s “When I Paint My Masterpiece” is so cool.

I also love how “Heart of the Continent” works as an update of “One Great City!”

I just really love Provincial.

 

Futon Revolutionist is one of my favorite JKS songs

 

Requests is mine as well. Love it

 

these are viable choices but "17th Street Treatment Centre"/"Virtute at Rest", y'all

 

Trying to decide what I think is john’s best lyrical work. Probably fire door or left and leaving. Interested in other opinions tho

 

My Favourite Chords means the most to me but Fire Door, Without Mythologies, ...Explains Her Departure and Hospital Vespers are all runners up

 

I recently moved out of my childhood home and man some of these songs kill me now and perfectly capture how I feel.

 

My nomination for best lyrics would be Utilities.

 

My favorite John K. lyric changes all the time, but right now it's this one from "A New Name For Everything."

When the one-ways collude with the map that you folded wrong
And the route you abandoned is always the path that you probably should be upon
When the bottle cap ashtrays and intimates' ears are all full
With results of your breath, and the threads of your fear are unfurled with the tiniest pull
One more time, try
Stand with your hands in your pockets and stare
At the smudge on a newspaper sky
And ask it to rain a new name for everything

And this part of "Fire Door" is perfect:

I still hear trains at night when the wind is right
I remember everything
Lick and thread this string
That will never mend you or tailor more
Than a memory of a kitchen floor
Or the fire door that we kept propping open
And I love this place: the enormous sky
And the faces, hands that I'm haunted by
So why can't I forgive these buildings
These frameworks labeled home?