Labels: Sub City
Review by: Andy Malcolm
Since I heard their song on the Sub City comp I’ve been on the look out for more Weakerthans stuff. And now I’ve found some. In my friend Simon’s vinyl collection.
Fuck! Don’t you hate it when you hear a great record and it’s not physically yours? I have to go out and buy this now. Of course I’ll tape it for now, but it’s just not the same.
The Weakerthans do super cool indie rock. Aiiiii! Count the number of perfect, swoonsome moments on an abacus. You will need several. Just song after song, wrapped up in layers of warm guitar and sublime vocals. And best of all, the songs aren’t afraid to rock! Now that’s a pretty good combo – normally to fit the above descriptions you’d be making a record which just makes you sit about and smile, but Fallow has songs on it, like “Diagnosis” that’ll rather make you want to get up and ‘shake your booty’. Do you reckon pirates ever used to shake their booty? Ah…
Then there’s the really fun stuff like “Confessions of a Futon-Revolutionist” that has me bounching around in my wonky swivel chair. You know when you hear songs that get everything right? Like they know when to switch around the guitar sound – speed things up or slow it down, or they have brief pauses that leave the singer on their own before the music comes back again? This song, and the whole rest of the album gets it spot on. The pauses are all the right length, the changes in song direction sound just so right. And the girl backing vocals on the lovely “Letter Of Resignation” just are.
The slow stuff rules too. Don’t be put off by the rather odd sounding opening acoustic song. Oh yeah, and there is an ex-member of Propagandhi in here. They even do a Prop cover. By the way, if you couldn’t tell from this review, they don’t sound much like each other. Heh.
So I guess what I am trying to say is this. Get this. Alternatively I could say “trust me”, but I hate reviews that say that. What? You can figure out if you ‘trust’ my opinion or not by seeing if I like the same shit that you do. And anyway, if someone says “trust me” it sounds like they are desperate for you to believe in them, when the reality is, they are being funded by someone to say that. Really. Trust me.
Or perhaps I should just suggest “Own this album, motherfucker”. But that just makes me look like an idiot. I wanna drive to this.