The Weakerthans
August 25th, 2008 - Written by sophie
The Weakerthans are an award-winning four-piece (and sometimes six-piece) Canadian indie rock band that blends punk-inflected folk rock with literate, introspective lyrics. The band’s debut album, Fallow, was released in 1997 on G7 Welcoming Committee Records, and garnered positive reviews from Canadian music critics. Guitarist Stephen Carroll, formerly of Painted Thin, subsequently joined the band, and Left and Leaving was released in 2000.
In 2003, the band moved to Epitaph Records and released Reconstruction Site. The album was met with rave reviews from Canadian and international critics for its ambitious combination of punk, rock, folk, country and sonnets. It also became the band’s best-selling record to date, as well as its airplay breakthrough on Canadian radio. It was the second Weakerthans album to be produced by Ian Blurton. Sutton, who played on all three of the band’s first albums, left in August 2004 and was replaced by Greg Smith.
In 2005, Left and Leaving was named one of the ten best Canadian albums of all time in Chart magazine’s reader poll. In the same poll, Samson wrote the capsule review for another top ten finisher, The Lowest of the Low’s Shakespeare My Butt, which he cited as a major influence on his own music.
Reunion Tour was released on September 25, 2007 in North America by Epitaph and ANTI-. The band released a video for “Civil Twilight”, which consisted of a single, unbroken camera shot of the band on a Winnipeg Transit city bus. Epitaph also re-released the Weakerthans’ first two albums, Fallow and Left and Leaving, in Canada on November 6th, 2007. Reunion Tour debuted at #22 on the Nielsen SoundScan chart for Canada in its first week of release, and at #4 on the alternative/modern rock chart.
The Weakerthans became the first band in the history of CBC Radio 3’s R3-30 charts to reach #1 with two different songs—its cover of Rheostatics’ “Bad Time to Be Poor” reached #1 the week of June 21st, 2007, and “Civil Twilight”, the lead single from its album Reunion Tour, hit the top spot the week of November 15th, 2007. As of December 2007, “Civil Twilight” is tied with Arcade Fire’s “Black Mirror” as the longest-running #1 in that chart’s history. “Civil Twilight” was also the #1 song in The R3-30′s year-end Top 100 chart.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weaker_Thans
Related Articles:
Find arcitcles with similar tags: confront, confront magazine, music, the weakerthans