In 1997, John K. Samson left the incredibly outspoken punk band, Propaghandi, to form the Weakerthans, and after listening to their fourth LP entitled Reunion Tour, I can’t help but ask why. I mean, I’ve never personally listened to Propaghani, but punk is simple. Thrash out a rocking three-chord progression, scream about how much you hate the government, throw in some “Hey’s” and “Yea’s” and there you have it. (And before all the punkers come screaming at me for that, I know I was significantly oversimplifying punk rock and what it’s done for modern music) My point is, if a punk band is good at that, they have a decent shot at gaining a significant fan base.
The Weakerthans, on the other hand, are indie pop, and pop music either goes one of two ways. The first way is that it is incredibly simplified, written by people whose main interest is making money, and written for mass audiences who don’t understand the intricacies of well composed music. The majority of heavily marketed radio trash such as teenie-bopper pop, club hits, rap and country fall into this category. The other kind of pop is indie pop which has been perfected by such bands as the Flaming Lips and The Shins. It usually contains a certain level of experimentalism or simply good songwriting.
Reunion Tour suffers from a lack of both. The music is horribly boring. It’s nothing but simple chord progressions. Granted a lot of bands write amazing songs using simple chord progressions, but as I have said before, they usually experiment with other sounds and instruments (Flaming Lips) or have great lyrics (The Shins). Speaking of, the lyrics on Reunion Tour are an atrocity all to themselves.
Over eleven tracks, Reunion Tour has 1,728 words (yes, I counted them all). That is, on average, 157 words per song. To put that into perspective, Radiohead’s OK Computer clocks in at 133, and Sgt. Pepper by the Beatles clocks in at 172. And that doesn’t even take into consideration that on both those albums, a lot of lyrics get repeated. But honestly, all math aside, that is a lot for one lyricist to say, especially when Samson has absolutely nothing profound to say. Furthermore, there is not one single chorus on the entire album. It is just Samson rambling about one thing or another on every single track.
Overall, the first thing I thought when I popped this album in was, “This kind of sounds like the Fountains of Wayne,” and that is never a good thing. Boring songwriting and completely uninteresting lyrics make this album a complete failure. The only reason I listened to this album all the way through was so that you don’t have to. Heed my advice. Leave this one on the shelves. “The Weakerthans” means just that, weaker than everything else out there.
