The Weakerthans Band • Page 13

"Left & Leaving" probably has my favorite lyrics front-to-back in any song. Every line is just so good and full of such great imagery.

I've also always been particularly impressed by the alliteration to start "Civil Twilight": "My Confusion Corner commuters are cursing the cold away."

And the curling imagery describing the narrator's life sliding by in "Tournament of Hearts" is another favorite.

Plus so many good one-liners like "Rely a bit too heavily on alcohol and irony."

 

he has a knack for putting words on feelings I didn't think were possible to describe.

Sometimes they're so stupidly simple like the ones from Fire Door about the enormous sky or "and darkness comes too early you won't find/the many things you owe these latest dead". They're just perfect, pinpoint, evocative descriptions of the kind of place/feeling they're talking about.
Sometimes they're such vivid images with such studied meaning like "my city's still breathing but barely it's true/through buildings gone missing like teeth". Like these are 14 words and they say as much as probably two paragraphs could. perfect multifaceted scene setting.
He can also do this thing where he leads you through the sentence, keeping your attention on each and every word, and it unravels into the next lyrics quasi seamlessly, like in Reconstruction Site or Reunion Tour. I'd compare it to dominos, or maybe a marble going through one of these plastic circuits.

And there's all the really satisfying, shorthand, descriptive turns of phrase like "near the corner of Memorial and me".

 

Memory will rust and erode into lists
Of all that you gave me
A blanket, some matches, this pain in my chest
The best parts of lonely
Duct tape and soldered wires
New words for old desires
And every birthday card I threw away

I couldn’t tell you why or how those words can evoke such a strong emotional reaction from me but what I can tell you is during a time where so many of my friends were moving away while I had to stay in the town I was born in due to personal and financial reasons those words brought me some peace of mind. When a bunch of my high school and college friends decided to get together again I played that song for them and it is a night I’ll never forget.

 

Always tear up at “in for three weeks or in for forever....” part of 17th Street Treatment Centre.

 

He has a way of just listing off a bunch of random shit and making it sound beautiful

 

God I love Reconstruction Site so much

 

L&L, RS, and RT is one of my favorite 3 album stretches

I don’t rly ever listen to Fallow it doesn’t do much for me

 

Fallow is their weakest as a whole but still had great songs. Wellington’s Wednesdays is one of their best

 

My personal fav is from Watermark

'Stand still, let me scrub that brackish line that you got when something rose and then receded'

 

Terrified of telephones and shopping malls and knives
And drowning in the pools of other lives

 

so am I just looking too hard here or did Fall Out Boy reference The Weakerthans on "Thriller"

"I found the safest place to keep all of our mistakes" can't be a coincidence right?

 

Every few months I dig through the youtube to see if there are any new live JKS songs floating around.

Found one today. It's glorious.

Fantasy Baseball at the End of the World

I manage my fantasy baseball team better
than I manage my anger these days
And I'd trade my best pitcher
for a draft pick and a picture
of the president writhing in pain

It's a weird thing to wish for
but i can't stop wishing
refreshing the browser some days
If i live long enough
and the world doesn't end
my wish will come true in a way

And he'll die like we all die
in pain or asleep
and we'll still have our fantasy baseball
and the next fascist fucker in line for the job demolishing hope for us all

So I'm putting in love now
Putting in faith
Putting fear on the long term I.L.

I'm going outside, I'm gonna help organize
Something better, something beautiful

 

"I'm putting fear on the long term IL" I love it

 

That song is just wonderful.

 

When I asked him about new stuff he said that was basically all he had done

 

John is playing a Chicago headline show! Finally! And some other places!

 

Haven’t listened to all of this yet, but Austin Lucas’s cover of “Anchorless” is amazing.

 

I know this was brought up before, but I really don't like the "real" version of Everything Must Go compared to the alt version on whatever rip of the album I have, lol. Completely different start to the album. It appears Apple Music has switched over to the real one

 

Noooooooo. I didn’t realize Apple Music switched over.

 

Here’s the other version on Apple Music - at the end of this comp if you want to make a playlist. I’m guessing it’s not linked to the band page because it’s tagged as “Weakerthans” with no “The.”

 

John has a new song out today!

Millennium for All

 

so good

 

I can't imagine being any of the galaxy brains at Pitchfork who gave Left & Leaving, Reconstruction Site, and Reunion Tour scores of 6.1, 5.6, & 5.9, out of 10, respectively.

This is the last paragraph for the review for Reconstruction Site:

"Throughout it's fourteen tracks, there's no doubting The Weakerthans are smart guys who keep up with literature and politics, but over the course of an entire album the band's ambitious literary posturing drowns in the bland songwriting and lack of captivating hooks. Perhaps best consumed as a single between Built to Spill and Dismemberment Plan on some smarmy Ivy League college radio show, The Weakerthans need less talk and a lot more pop in their formula. With their soundtrack, I'd much rather read the book."

 

LOL

 

I hate that review and I just put on Reconstruction Site to spite them. This album is loaded with hooks lol fuck do they mean