The Weakerthans: Left & Leaving, 25th Anniversary

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These days, the year 2000 sounds so long ago. And it is. People born in 2000 have been drinking legally for four years now. But, as someone born in 1980, I still remember when the year 2000 felt so far ahead. The number alone made it seem like a much more distant future than it actually was, like we’d be soaring to school in jetpacks or flying cars, while kindly robots with a billion arms cleaned our homes, and we could teleport to Niagara Falls for vacation, if there’s still a Niagara Falls.

While none of that ended up happening, the looming fear of Y2K (Google it) did make 2000 feel like an impending reset, a great unknown, where anything was possible and possibly catastrophic, and, regardless of how advanced we thought we were, we might still be ill-prepared for that chaos, digital or otherwise.

And then Y2K, by and large, also didn’t happen.

What did happen in 2000, before the new millennium ultimately gave birth to Myspace, iPods, YouTube, Netflix, Facebook and 9/11, is a little band called The Weakerthans from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada released their sophomore record, titled — kind of perfectly, considering we were saying goodbye to a whole-ass century — Left & Leaving.

If you’ve never heard of The Weakerthans, don’t worry, neither have most people I’ve met for the past twenty-five years. I only found out about them when a buddy of mine loaned me their debut CD, Fallow (1997), probably in early 2000, telling me I could keep it if I liked it, that he wasn’t that into it.

I didn’t like it, I fucking loved it. I couldn’t believe that he didn’t like it. And you think you know someone.

Musically, it was almost everything I’d grown up listening to — country, pop/rock, punk, indie rock, power/pop — thrown into a blender, where it didn’t just work, it made sense. Nothing about it sounded forced or novel, like when a punk band has one “country” song, or how most ‘80s metal bands had one acoustic ballad about roses/thorns, or their mom, or whatever. The Weakerthans’ cocktail of genres felt natural, like the only possible musical landscape on which their lyrics could grow. And those lyrics were like nothing I’d heard before. It was poetry without being pretentious and punk without being punk. I couldn’t put my finger on it (still can’t, exactly), but I decided, following the release of Left & Leaving, that my friend had inadvertently introduced me to my new favorite band.

A lot of artists fear the “sophomore slump” of their second record not living up to the creativity and/or hype of the first. The Weakerthans apparently did not get that memo, as Left & Leaving springboards off Fallow, taking everything that made that record great and launching it into the stratosphere, returning to earth with an album that’s sonically thicker, more layered, more meat on its bones, so to speak, with lyrics somehow even more profound, excavating the poetry of everyday life, holding a magnifying glass to the smallest moments, artifacts and expressions, until every pore, every wrinkle, every tear in the fabric can be examined, reminding us that, no matter how small we are in the grand scheme — and we are so very small — few things are inconsequential. Our actions have reactions and impacts. Our lives are butterfly wings with the potential to cause tidal waves.

I’ve always been a lyrics guy. Sure, I love when individual sounds come together to create little masterpieces. There’s a magic to making music, but give me a quality turn of phrase over a “sick drum solo” any day.

I hold the art of writing in very high regard. I think it’s far easier to learn how to play an instrument than it is to learn how to write well, find your voice, and allow/expand/open your mind into discovering new ways to string old letters into words, then sentences, capable of bringing a tear to a stranger’s eye, a smile to their face or jolt of inspiration to their heart.

So, in honor of Left & Leaving turning twenty-five, I wanted to shine a light on my favorite lyrics of The Weakerthans, not only from Left & Leaving, but every record, in chronological order.

This was no easy feat, as damn near every line from every Weakerthans song works as a standalone bit of poetry, but I gave myself the rule of “No more than one line/snippet from each song.” And, to be honest, ask me my favorites tomorrow, they might be completely different.

Happy birthday, Left & Leaving. And cheers to The Weakerthans for leaving all of this behind.

The Weakerthans were:
John K. Samson (vocals/guitar)
Jason Tait (drums)
Stephen Carroll (guitar)
Greg Smith (bass)
John P. Sutton (bass)

Fallow (1997)

1. ‘Illustrated Bible Stories for Children’

“Morning bright, rise,
go over your lines, iron your carefully crafted disguise.
We’d all like to sing.
It’s easy to sigh, to sprinkle a handful of plausible lies.”

2. ‘Diagnosis’

“I have a story I’d like to tell you,
it’s littered with settings, second takes.
I have a feeling that hums with the streetlights, hides under ice in always-frozen lakes.”

3. ‘Confessions of a Futon-Revolutionist’

“Held like water in your shaking hands
are all the small defeats a day demands.
10 to 6 or 9 to 5, trying, dying to survive,
never knowing what survival means.”

4. ‘None of the Above’

“This brand new strip mall chews on farm land
as we fish for someone to blame,
but we communicate in questions
and all our answers sound the same.”

5. ‘Letter of Resignation’

“There’s a certain search for certainty you know we’ll never see.”

6. ‘Leash’

“Maybe someday the lies we’ve led around
will crawl under our beds and sleep off the years.”

7. ‘Wellington’s Wednesdays’

“Every time a light is turned on,
there’s a light that’s turned off somewhere.
For every other moment that’s lost,
there’s a perfect cost, there’s a debt you can’t share.”

8. ‘The Last Last One’

“Nothing happens in the end,
but I remember when  I could remember when.
Seems like a long time ago.”

9. ‘Greatest Hits Collection’

“My new philosophy is that a crappy tapedeck plays a greatest hits collection
of strange and tender moments lost, stranded and forgotten.”

10. ‘Sounds Familiar’

“And that still-twitching bird was so deceived by a window,
so we eulogized fondly, we dug deep and threw
its elegant plumage and frantic black eyes in a hole
and then rushed out to kill something new
so we could bury that too.”

11. ‘Anchorless’

“Got an armchair from your family home,
got your P.G. Wodehouse novels and your telephone,
got your plates and stainless steel,
got that way of never saying what you really feel.”

12. ‘Fallow’

“Try so hard not to remember
what all empty playgrounds know:
that sympathy is cruel. Reluctant jester or simpering fool?”

Left & Leaving (2000)

1. ‘Everything Must Go!’

“Wage-slave, forty-hour work week weighs a thousand kilograms,
so bend your knees comes with a free fake smile
for all your dumb demands.”

2. ‘Aside’

“I’m leaning on this broken fence between past and present tense.”

3. ‘Watermark’

“Hold on to the corners of today and we’ll fold it up to save until it’s needed.”

4. ‘Pamphleteer’

“How I don’t know what I should do
with my hands when I talk to you.
How you don’t know where you should look,
so you look at my hands.”

5. ‘This is a Fire Door, Never Leave Open’

“So tell me it’s okay, tell me anything 
or show me there’s a pull, unassailable
that will lead you there from the dark alone,  to benevolence that you’ve never known 
or you knew when you were four and can’t remember.”

6. ‘Without Mythologies’

“Someplace far away  at some sad table littered with chipped plates,
with bad light in forty-eight frames from a movie on the cutting room floor, you said,
‘True meaning would be dying with you,”
and, though I wanted to, I did not smile.”

7. ‘Left & Leaving’

“Memory will rust and erode into lists of all that you gave me:
a blanket, some matches, this pain in my chest.
The best parts of Lonely.”

8. ‘Elegy for Elsabet’

“Let every wind howl and creak the creaking doors
to rooms that too much has happened in.”

9. ‘History to the Defeated’

“Always too tall, always walked around wearing
a smile that was never quite sure of itself.”

10. ‘Exiles Among You’

“She shoplifts some Christmas gifts
and a bracelet for herself
and considers phoning home,
has some quarters in her hand.
But she sits down on the sidewalk  and bites her bottom lip
and spends the afternoon
willing traffic lights to change.”

11. ‘My Favorite Chords’

“I found the safest place to keep all our tenderness,
keep all those bad ideas, keep all our hope.
It’s here in the smallest bones, the feet and the inner ear.
It’s such an enormous thing to walk and to listen.”

12. ‘Slips and Tangles’

“Another urban wasteland thick with fears,
icy lights that shine like frozen television tears.”

Reconstruction Site (2003)

1. ‘Manifest)’

“I want to call requests through heating vents
and hear them answered with a whisper, ‘No.’”

2. ‘The Reasons’

“How whole years refuse to stay where we told them to,  bad dog, locked up, whining in a word  or a misplaced souvenir,
How the past chews on your shoes  and these memories lick my ear.”

3. ‘Reconstruction Site’

“I’m a float in a summer parade up the street in the town that you were born in, with a girl at the top wearing tulle
and a Miss Somewhere sash,
waving like the queen.”

4. ‘Psalm for the Elk’s Lodge Last Call’

“… with the traffic and our heartbeats beating in straight time,
let our hatred and affection march in the same line
before we say goodnight.”

5. ‘Plea from a Cat Named Virtute’

“Ask the things you shouldn’t miss:
tape hiss and the Modern Man,
Cold War and card catalogues
to come and join us if they can for girly drinks and parlor games, we’ll pass around the easy lie
of absolutely no regrets  and later maybe you could try
to let your losses dangle off  the sharp edge of a century,
talk about the weather or  how the weather used to be.”

6. ‘Our Retired Explorer (Dines with Michel Foucault in Paris, 1961)’

“Light failing over the pole  as every longitude leads up to your frostbitten feet.”

7. ‘Time’s Arrow’

“Terrorized by the ruling party, calendars and commas.”

8. ‘(Hospital Vespers)’

“You tried not to roll your sunken eyes  and said, ‘Hey, can you help me, I can’t reach it,”
pointed at the camera in the ceiling.
I climbed up, blocked it so they couldn’t see,
turned to find you out of bed and kneeling.
Before the nurses came, took you away,
I stood there on a chair and watched you pray.”

9. ‘Uncorrected Proofs’

“Sifting through translucent shards of glass,
looking for a filament
that lit the life you want.”

10. ‘A New Name for Everything’

“When the one-ways collude with the map that you’ve folded wrong
and the route you’ve abandoned is always the path that you probably should be upon,
when the bottle cap ashtrays and intimates’ ears are all full
with results of your breath, and the threads of your fear are unfurled with the tiniest pull;
one more time, try.
Stand with your hands in your pockets and stare  at the smudge on a newspaper sky
and ask it to rain a new name for everything.”

11. ‘One Great City!’

“Late afternoon, another day is nearly done, a darker gray is breaking through a lighter one.”

12. ‘Benediction’

“Smile and take your awkward bow,
turn and stumble off the stage,
let the rain be your applause,
every encore soothe your rage.”

13. ‘The Prescience of Dawn’

“I don’t want a second chance  to turn my stuttering reluctance into romance
with these documents and kindergarten anthems, with my drunken liturgies.
Tune the FM into static and pretend that it’s the sea.”

14. ‘(Past-Due)’

“Formal photographs refuse to mention his tiny feet, that birthmark on her knee.
The tyranny of framing our attention with all the eyes their eyes no longer see.”

Reunion Tour (2007)

1. ‘Civil Twilight’

“For the most part, I think about golfing and constantly calculate  all the seconds left in the minutes and so on, etc.
or recite the names of provinces and Hollywood actors.
‘Oh, Ontario. Oh, Jennifer Jason Leigh,’
but this part of the day bewilders me.”

2. ‘Hymn of the Medical Oddity’

“The sun will start late and clock out early,
and I’ll drive around and wait for it,
follow familiar roads emptied of every memory
under a sheet of silence and unmarked snow.”

3. ‘Relative Surplus Value’

“Touch my name tag.  Should say, ‘HELLO I’M: too tired to smile today.’
Squeak the chair once, take a deep breath,  straighten my tie and say,
‘What’s the damage?’
And the pause feels like an extra year of high school.”

4. ‘Tournament of Hearts’

“And my popcorn squeaks a question,  wonders why I’m not at home,
where you wait beside a silent telephone
and doodle circles within circles, all alone.”

5. ‘Virtute the Cat Explains Her Departure’

“It had something to do with the rain leaching loamy dirt,  and the way the back lane came alive,
half moon whispered, ‘Go.’
For a while, I heard you  missing steps in the street  and your anger pleading  in an uncertain key,
singing the sound that you found for me.”

6. ‘Elegy for Gump Worsley’

“He looked more like our fathers,
not a goalie, player, athlete period.
Smoke, half ash, stuck in that permanent smirk.”

7. ‘Sun in an Empty Room’

“Take eight minutes and divide  by ninety million lonely miles
and watch a shadow cross the floor.
We don’t live here anymore.”

8. ‘Night Windows’

“The full moon makes our faces shine like over-ironed polyester
then disappears behind the clouds  and leaves me under empty rows  of night windows.”

9. ‘Bigfoot’

“I’ll go through it all again,  watch their doubtful smiles begin,
but the visions that I see believe in me.”

10. ‘Reunion Tour’

“The house lights lit our injuries
for crowds of plastic cups that clapped beneath
bartenders’ sleepy brooms.”

11. ‘Utilities’

“We can wish on the pop of a lightbulb or those photos lying yellow and curled, loose in boxes near abandoned electronics in the corners of the basements of the world.” 

Video: Shot by Larry Fulford, with a camcorder (Google it)