Epitaph / Ada
2003
Reconstruction Site
About This Album
The title of the Weakerthans' third full-length LP is appropriate, because even if it's not meant to, Reconstruction Site is a great way to describe the most defined document yet of singer, principal songwriter, and guitarist John Samson's trajectory from the punk rock of Propagandhi to the Weakerthans' quietly determined indie pop. While his former group was as concerned with social change as it was with a lockstep drum beat, Samson's recent work has traded power-chord fury for the slow-burning -- but no less hot -- embers of fully realized, deceptively simple pop/rock that brings the songwriter's flair for metaphor to stage front. Like the Mountain Goats' John Darnielle, whose intelligence and wit seep into every corner of his work, the odd, sometimes grandiose song titles of Reconstruction Site are headings for lyrics that revisit pet Samson topics -- the beauty/hell of life in Winnipeg, destructive/confusing personal relationships, and personal ethics as a reaction to the welfare state. The latter, detailed in "Our Retired Explore (Dines With Michel Foucault in Paris, 1961)," is some heady stuff, to be sure. But Samson just as easily personifies a pussycat in "Plea from a Cat Named Virtue," where his tabby takes him to task for "sleeping as much as I do.
Track List (try tracks 2,3,4,5,6,7,9,10,11 and 12)

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