headlessparrot's Full Review: Reconstruction Site by The Weakerthans
Colin Meloy sings that “Albert Camus said living was anguish” on Neapolitan Bridesmaid, a song by Tarkio, his Decemberists-anticipating college rock band. On The Past Is A Grotesque Animal, Of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes pines for a cute girl “who could appreciate Georges Bataille.” And the narrator – who, by the way, may or may not be Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton – of the Weakerthans’ Our Retired Explorer dines with Michel Foucault, and thanks him “for the book by Derrida.” Clearly there’s a profound relationship between post-millennial indie rock and semi-obscure French critical theorists of the 20th century – one which is ripe for scholarly analysis in the doctoral thesis of a person much brighter (and, arguably, much more preoccupied with the minutiae of popular media) than myself. This, ultimately, has nothing to do with anything that I have to say about the Weakerthans’ 2003 album Reconstruction Site, except insofar as it constitutes one of the thoughts that inevitably fires through my synapses every time that I listen to the album. Which means, actually, that it has everything to do with what I have to say about the Weakerthans’ 2003 album Reconstruction Site (primarily that it’s really, really good). Or not.
Reconstruction Site is the musical equivalent of a Vladimir Nabokov short story (more accurately, the whole body of Nabokov’s work – see below – flirts with this sensibility, but this particular one is an exquisite example), The Vane Sisters, which uses its rich language and purely aesthetic appeal to trap the bad reader into glossing over its crypto-spiritual substance (an acrostic, carefully inserted by a deceased partner, into the final paragraph of the narrator’s reflections – an authorial touch missed, incidentally, by everyone: even the New Yorker, which initially rejected the story, had to be told by mail of Nabokov’s trickery). Nabokov himself observed that such a trick “can only be used once in a thousand years of fiction,” and maybe the same can be said for Reconstruction Site’s blender of pop and intellectual, of mainstream and liberal arts sensibilities. This is not to say – as an aside – that Weakerthans-leader John K. Samson is exclusively a post-modern aesthetician in the Nabokovian mode, but I have spent the better part of an undergraduate career making tenuous thematic connections where there are none, and this link is a curiously persistent one in my line of thinking.
A story: from the age of sixteen to my departure for greener pastures (university) at the age of eighteen, I worked faithfully at the Central Branch of the Windsor Public Library. For the most part, I spent my days shelving books, periodicals, DVDs, videos, and – occasionally – CDs. Amongst those few records which I found myself re-shelving on a semi-regular basis was the Weakerthans’ Reconstruction Site. I recall having absolutely no idea who this group was, or why I should care that their album was so popular among the book-borrowing set; in retrospect, however, this seems like a bit of a fiction to me, for I would have then had absolutely no reason to ever borrow the disc at all, which I eventually did. I suspect, for what it’s worth, that this was an unconsciously constructed argument for the importance of “taking a chance” on art, but ‘d rather not look more pretentious (or more insufferable) than I already am. I did, in any case, borrow the album, and I responded to it the only way that an inexperienced sixteen-year-old knew how: I, for all intents and purposes, fell in love with it. Never mind that I – at sixteen – had only the faintest idea who Derrida or Foucault were, or why I should care (these were heady, pre-Wikipedia days for me, sort of an intellectual Wild West). Or, for that matter, what made Psalm for the Elks Lodge Last Call so lyrically clever. But I marvelled at Reconstruction Site on an aesthetic level, much the way that I did when (returning to our Russian-American author friend) I struggled through Lolita at approximately the same age. Nabokov’s point was lost on me at the time (it’s still lost on quite a few, so I don’t feel too bad about it**), but I was still dazzled by the electricity of his prose, which was breathtakingly beautiful. That I experienced both of these artifacts at approximately the same time does perhaps explain the temptation I have to build a theoretical bridge between them. But in any case, Reconstruction Site was, pretension aside, simply quite pretty: hook-filled, melody driven, eclectic and yet reassuringly familiar.
After five years of regular listening – requisite food for thought: Reconstruction Site is the only complete record that I have had saved, in full, on every digital media device I have ever owned: three PCs, one laptop, an external hard drive, and two mp3 players – I'm still never quite certain what to make of the record. Granted, I rather like it, but on trying to write about it my thoughts become abstract and rather scattered – half-sentences, parentheses and circuitous asides – over thirty-one Post-It notes worth of 'review' (if you can call it that), with no defining narrative or sense of cohesion. The majority of these thoughts are not objective observations, but rather stray recollections and curiously spiraling tangents, lines of thought which bear no ostensible relevance to the music in question. And yet I am convinced that these barely-coherent reflections (which I have done my best to order and shape for the benefit of you, the reader) are at least part of what makes Reconstruction Site so great – that I can digress, ramble, theorize, and feel, all the while, as thought this is what I'm meant to be doing with what I've heard, and furthermore what all critical listening audiences should be striving to do. This is rather silly, given that few people are so deeply compelled to write about music at all, and it is another reason why you (yes you) won't like the album or the band. But – and this is rather startling for someone as self-congratulatory about his music tastes as I claim to be – I don't really care whether you like it. And in a roundabout, that's a pretty good endorsement.
Reconstruction Site is great, in part, because it's so smart. This evaluation will inevitably turn away an audience – and, in fact, has lead to its dismissal by Pitchfork types, who are perhaps paradoxically the most obvious market for eclectic, Foucault and Derrida-namedropping indie rock but who maybe felt that it was all a little to obvious and instead went back to appreciating T-Pain ironically. And in many respects, it all is a bit too obvious. The hyper-literary references and careful production, – flirting precariously between those critical buzzwords 'lo-fi' and 'orchestral' - even Samson's weak but earnest vocals seem scientifically engineered to cover all the criteria of Pitchfork-judged greatness. And part of you wants to quip, rather acerbically, that the band is just trying too hard. But it's difficult to, because – whatever the ingredients – the end result is so painfully good that it's not worth caring what others think. Of course, this is based on the assumption that we should care what others think about our musical taste in the first place, which is rather silly given that, as Chuck Klosterman writes (and this kind of scenario is not, as far as I recall, what he was referring to), “everyone is wrong about everything, pretty much all the time.” Except, of course, for you (thus making my attempts at persuading you that an album can be objectively brilliant rather like swimming in tar). And yes, I am repeating myself, but this is what happens when you assemble an argument from thirty-one Post-It Notes of Unabomber-style script.
Nevertheless, my undiminished enthusiasm for Reconstruction Site, even five years on, is the only defense I have. This, admittedly, means everything and nothing (to me – everything; to you – nothing). And the fact that I'm a literature-loving, prose-writing, liberal arts major, indeed probably has something to do with why I love this album so dearly. Because it is, when all is said and done, informed by those same vaguely academic sensibilities. It is a piece of art for the masses, high-concept by way of low culture, and basking in the egalitarianism of rock and roll – a collection of pop gems that takes wry pleasure in (like those deliberate authorial puzzles of Nabokov's) in framing the difficult – Our Retired Explorer explores “personal ethics as a reaction to the welfare state,” according to the intrepid reporters over at All Music Guide – with a gloss of the aurally wonderful. Reconstruction Site is such a brilliantly transcendent record – a definitive art-rock conversation piece – because it so perfectly synthesizes the aesthetic and the intellectual. Granted, this is not a perfect album. There is probably no record I've heard in twenty-one years of life which I could claim as truly perfect. It is, however, one of a half-dozen or so records which I find myself turning to again and again and often, for all anyone cares, getting something new from it.
Some additional background: the Weakerthans are a four-piece indie-folk-punk-rock band who call Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada home. Lead by John K. Samson, who is perhaps best known ('best-known' being a relative term) for membership in anarchist-punk outfit Propaghandi, the Weakerthans are an elusive beast; Reconstruction Site is their third album, and they've since released a fourth – but depending on who you ask, they're a punk band with a folk influence, a folk band with a punk influence, or an indie band with a 'pretty much anything' influence. The latter is probably most accurate, but fails to communicate much of anything.
Imagine, perhaps, a three-headed demon lovechild of Ted Leo, the Decemberists, and the Shins (with a dash of Harvest-era Neil Young) and maybe – that's a big maybe – you'll begin to get the idea. It's all rather sweet and melodious, literary, thoughtful, and yet – like a riled-up dog – kind of aggravated. I fully realize, by the by, the problem of explaining the Weakerthans by way of other, only slightly less obscure artists. I can only conclude therefore, given that you've read this far anyway that you're a) familiar with these artists, b) familiar with the Weakerthans (which might imply option a) in any case), or c) impressed with my oblique prose and self-consciously obtuse culture references. Incidentally, I've never actually heard anything by Propaghandi, though the name has rattled around in my head for years (in fact, I'm not even sure whether Propaghandi is a name as well-known as it always seemed, instinctively, to be to me). There's a chance this means I'm not person to best interpret John K. Samson's post-Propaghandi output. I'm of the opinion, however, that my absurdly pretentious prose style more than makes up for this shortcoming.
Samson is, for what it’s worth, a better-than-adequate lyricist. “Better-than-adequate” hardly seems like an effluent rush of praise for the songwriter, so I’ll add this: I am sure that, without music to set his words to, he would still find some success as a writer of prose or poetry. That he chose not to, and opted instead for the more lucrative field of rock and roll – well, I’m not sure exactly what it says about Samson, but the career choice certainly provides worthy exposure to (and a fascinating outlet for) his considerable talents.
How good, exactly, is better-than adequate? Well, it's worth pointing out that Reconstruction Site is the only rock album I know of that features prominently a sonnet. What's more is that Reconstruction Site features three of them, framing the album with a series of beautiful vignettes (one the album opener, one at the halfway point, and one in closing) written in the scheme of the Shakespearean sonnet (ABAB CDCD EFEF GG). What's interesting about this careful scheme – beyond the fact that it displays a modicum of intellectual respect for the listener – is the manner in which it ultimately falls so meticulously apart, as the grand finale (Past-Due) is deliberately missing its concluding couplet. The implication here is compelling, that discovering this final set of rhymes is the work of a listener who will then, finally, have pieced together the meaning of a forty-minute masterpiece. Of course, the inside joke is played out in the careful namedropping of Foucault – that final couplet will never be pieced together, precisely because the grand narratives we come to expect are a subjective fiction. Still, what's here is more than worth the price of entry, the opening couplet setting the stage rather brilliantly in a celebration of meaninglessness: “I want to call requests through heating vents / And hear them answered with a whisper 'no.'” And even distilled down to isolated lines, Reconstruction Site remains remarkably charming (“The Guess Who suck / The Jets were lousy anyway” in reference to Samson's central Canadian hometown, a reference to a machine powered by “all those batteries we stole from smoke alarms,” and so on).
Reconstruction Site tumbles out lyrically, an outpouring of careful detail whose importance is found in its triviality. Narratives weave brilliantly, painting vivid portraits and capturing everyday moments in their brief flashes of transcendence – a clerk counting loose change, the Elks Lodge toast to absent members, and restlessness on the cramped real estate of public transit. The band takes joy in the tender details, delighting in deft metaphor (“I'm your dress near the back of your knee / And your slip is showing”). But the songcraft, not just Samson's lyrics, are part of the story too: the gorgeous French horn of (Manifest) is sublime, and the album's luscious guitar tone (see The Prescience of Dawn), subtle musical flourishes, never too much. Maracas, lap-steel guitars, high harmonies, even the backward-flowing instrumentation of (Hospital Vespers) are carefully orchestrated and ever understated. It would be tempting to overload these gorgeous melodies with gaudy strings and droning synths (and, in fact, the band has begun to experiment with this on their most recent, and somewhat less spectacular – though still quite superb - album, Reunion Tour). But choosing not to do so gives Reconstruction Site a starkness, a prescience, and an immediacy that belies its pop-polish.
One Great City is one of a long list of highlights, heartfelt and bittersweet. The song – a brightly strummed acoustic rhythm under finger-plucked flourishes – is great precisely because its embrace of detail (the Guess Who, the Winnipeg Jets; even its title is a reference to a tourism slogan that adorns road signs as you enter the city) paradoxically universalizes its sentiment, the love/hate relationship that we all have with our homes. Joyce and Faulkner, amongst others, spent the majority of their careers reflecting this patriotic ambiguity in prose, and Samson is thus in good literary company. The melody is simply sweet, unraveling the antipathy of his deliberately coarse words (“I hate Winnipeg”).
Elsewhere, Benediction merges indie rock with a folksy, down-home influence, resulting in an electric twang thats complemented by the subtle, harmonic vocals of back-up singer Sarah Harmer. Our Retired Explorer (Dines With Michel Foucault in Paris, 1961) plays with the divide between modernism and post-modernism, while slyly playing with the theorist's homosexuality (as his male dinner date comments, “Thank you for the flowers and the book by Derrida”). The Reasons, meanwhile, is propelled by its smirking chorus - “I know you might roll your eyes at this / But I'm so glad that you exist” - as though this were the ultimate reflection of tenderness in a world as abstract as Samson's.
(Hospital Vespers) is home to more wonderful couplets over backmasked instruments - “Doctors played your dosage like a card trick / Scrabbled down the hallways yelling 'Yahtzee!'.” And Uncorrected Proofs simply has all the anthemic qualities of a great rock song – crunchy guitars and propulsive, click-clack rhythm, alternating ascending and descending fills, and a wonderful, exploding sing-along chorus. Plea From A Cat Named Virtute is similarly a great rock anthem, but a bit more heady in tone – narrated by an exasperated house cat, who vainly lectures his apathetic owner ("I swear I'm going to bite you hard / And taste your tinny blood / If you don't stop the self-defeating lies you've been repeating / Since the day you brought me home / I know you're strong."). It sounds, I've previously written, silly, and yet it's mostly just heartbreaking.
Reconstruction Site may, actually, some day be considered the definitive Canadian album – or perhaps the definitive Canadian cult recording; I've never been one to think too big – a record that is indeed independently great, but one that also so lovingly incorporates careful details of 'Canadiana' in its rich tapestry of narratives, the country's cities, stories, history, and environment all playing such crucial roles on the periphery of the album's progression. But then again, I don't really care if this happens, because Reconstruction Site is – in light of the almost 3000 words I've written – a really, really good record.
Conclusion: I need to stop writing reviews on loose Post-It Notes.
**= Hint: Understanding the importance of the unreliable narrator is a wonderful start in reading Lolita, but we can never forget the equally important role played by the unwitting, unreliable reader.
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