Reunion Tour
by The Weakerthans

Album details

US: 25 September 2007 on Epitaph
UK: 8 October 2007 on Anti

The Winnipeg, Canada band’s fourth album (and first since 2003’s ‘Reconstruction Site’) was again produced by Ian Burtan.

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The critical consensus

We should get this out of the way at the start: the song "Tournament of Hearts" is, indeed, about the sport of curling. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) As for the rest of the album–let’s just say that the band has won fans in the past with their literate, story-like lyrics, and the certainly aren’t going to lose them now after another strong outing.

Exclaim! enjoys the disc’s detailed character studies and says the album "still contains the memorable, folk-tinged power pop the band are known for but is filled with enough surprises to demand more serious listening." Aversion calls Reunion Tour (and no, they never broke up) their best album yet, while Paste concludes, "If such a prize existed, it would be the leading candidate for this year’s Punk Pulitzer.". Amazon.com reports that "the album sounds surprisingly warm, lush, and vigorous" (only surprising, of course, because it was recorded in the frigid Manitoba winter), while Crawdaddy! deems it "cohesive and focused," concluding, "With Reunion Tour it all comes together for the Weakerthans, having the potential to make many of the band’s skeptics finally come on over to their side." And The New York Times’ Kelefa Sanneh writes, "It’s not hard to imagine Death Cab for Cutie fans falling in love with this album."

Sputnik finds that "The Weakerthans are still writing pretty, tender music, but they seem to have lost their immediacy and potency," while Chart Attack actually has a litany of complaints, calling the band "bankrupt of new ideas" with their albums getting progressively "more and more timid" and the new disc downright "lazy." (That said, the songs on Reunion Tour are still "retardedly catchy.") To that conclusion, the Hartford Courant has a comeback: "If it seems like they haven’t grown much since in the four years since their last album, it’s only because they can’t get any smarter." And Now Magazine states, "While some might be turned off by the Weakerthans’ sameness, others know they can count on infectious choruses and John K. Samson’s sweet, delicate voice to carry the disc the entire way through."

If they are truly the poet laureates of indie rock as they’ve been called, Reunion Tour may just be their ‘Canterbury Tales.’

- Dave Lake, Aversion

Review roundup

Tracklisting and media

1. Civil Twilight
2. Hymn of the Medical Oddity
3. Relative Surplus Value
4. Tournament of Hearts
5. Virtute the Cat Explains Her Departure
6. Elegy from Gump Worsley
7. Sun in an Empty Room
8. Night Windows
9. Bigfoot!
10. Reunion Tour
11. Utilities

Also on the web

• Official Artist Site
• The Weakerthans @ MySpace