So Martijn Buisman is back with his review of The Weakerthans gig at the Melkweg, in Amsterdam.
“Leaning on this broken fence between past and present tense”
Weakerthans, Melkweg November 26th
Let me describe the way I usually walk to the Melkweg and Paradiso (they are virtually next to each other). If it is on Monday or Thursday I usually take out my trash and put it at the side of the road so the trashmen can easily pick it up the morning after. I then pass the prostitutes, the men slowly walking there and looking into the windows while the street cars slow down to almost standstill to watch as well. Then the desolute part past the hotel, the booking agency for theaters where people always seem to be at work after 8 o’clock until I reach the firehouse that is next to the Rijksmuseum. I pass it on the backside, looking out over the magnificent Musuemsquare with the Van Gogh museum and Concertgebouw way in the back. Lost tourists look at maps or walk along the little pond. Then it’s the Indonesian restaurant and the square named after the great Chess master Max Euwe where sometimes people still play chess on a big chessboard with pieces about a foot high while across from there people are eating bacon-cheeseburgers in the Rock ‘n Roll Café. There are more people now going to restaurants, into Paradiso or the movie theatre or to the many bars on the Leidseplein. A small alley leads to the Melkweg. This could be in a Weakerthans song, but then more lyrically and with more eye for detail, because the lyrics frontman John K. Sampson might have the best lyrics of any band in the new century.
Songs about curling (Tournament of Hearts), Arctic exploring (Our Retired Explorer dines with Michel Foucault in Paris, 1961) and observations about city life, it’s all part of the Weakerthans songbook which now consists of 4 cd’s. The last one came out a few months ago and is called ‘Reunion Tour’ and it is the reason for a new tour that brought them to the Melkweg old room, a step up from the Paradiso upstairs room where I saw them last year. It was not entirely sold out, which is a shame. While the Arcade Fire played in the much bigger Heineken Music Hall for €40, the Weakerthans were here for a room at 80% capacity, and for only a third of the price.
Here’s a bold statement: The Weakerthans are the best band from Canada. Eat that Arcade Fire! Maybe musically they are not equal to the Montreal-based group but lyrically there is no equal to this foursome from Winnipeg. The music is powerpop/punk with some tinges of country. All the members already have a good track record in (Canadian) indie music. John K Sampson for example was the bassplayer in the semi-legendary punkband Propagandhi while other members have played with Broken Social Science.
The show had speed and the amazing amount of great songs almost made the first part of the show a greatest hits compilation. And the songs are impressive and varied, from slow to fast, upbeat and depressing. But the lyrics of the songs make them all stand apart. In Sampson’s songs he can make time stand still, slow down or speed up. Time can be in the past or in the future. As he says in ‘Aside’: I am leaning on this broken fence between past and presense tense’ or in the beautiful ‘Left and Leaving’, of which my start is a pathetic attempt of recreation. “I wait in 4-4 time, count yellow highway lines, that you’re relying on to lead you home”
City life in Winnipeg also returns in ‘One Great City’ with the chorus “I Hate Winnipeg”. But it’s not him that’s singing those words, it’s the people in the city complaining about the price of gas or the real estate agent high above the city in his skyscraper looking over the city to old neighborhoods that he can break down to turn them into new property. His love of cats can be seen in the songs ‘Plea From a Cat Named Virtue’ and it’s follow-up ‘Virtute the cat explains her departure’ written from the perspective of his cat when it’s looking at his life, including requests to ask his sister not to bring her dog. The uptempo ‘Our Retired Explorer’ is a song about arctic exploring, but also features the mentioning of the philosopher Derrida. No songs about lovely lady humps here. Ok, one more from ‘Reconstruction Site’: Buy me a shiny new machine that runs on lies and gasoline, and all those batteries we stole from smoke-alarms, and disassembles my despair. It never took me anywhere. It never once bought me a drink.” As with the Decemberists the sound is good enough to hear the lyrics, which is the strongest point of the band. Arcade Fire, Stars, Feist and more may lead the way for Canadian music, but in my opinion it’s that little known band the Weakerthans that beats all of them.
Not as good as the two Battles concerts I saw this year, but it might just creep into the concert Top of 2007.
Go here for their page lyrics
Go here for their Myspace
Go here for the video of The Reasons
And here their best video (including sleddogs, snow and french-teaching penguins)