Reunion Tour

Infobox Album
Name = Reunion Tour
Type = studio
Artist = The Weakerthans

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Released = flagicon|CAN September 25 2007
flagicon|USA September 25 2007
Recorded = March 2007
Genre = Folk punk
Length = 37:06
Label = Epitaph
Producer =
Reviews =
*The Music Magazine Rating|4|5 [http://www.themusicmagazine.co.uk/page.php?al=the_weakerthans_reunion_tour_album_review link]
*Allmusic Rating|4|5 [http://www.allmusicguide.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:dnfexzygldje link]
*This Is Fake DIY Rating|3.5|5 [http://www.thisisfakediy.co.uk/articles/7393/The-Weakerthans---Reunion-Tour.html link]
*Rocklouder Rating|5|5 [http://www.rocklouder.co.uk/articles/4149/The-Weakerthans---Reunion-Tour.html link]
*Strange Glue Rating|3.5|5 [http://strangeglue.com/the-weakerthans-reunion-tour/2336/ link]
Last album = "Reconstruction Site"
(2003)
This album = "Reunion Tour"
(2007)
Next album =

"Reunion Tour" is the fourth studio album by The Weakerthans, released on September 25, 2007 in Canada and the U.S. [ [http://www.punknews.org/article/24298 PunkNews.org.] ] [ [http://www.anti.com/catalog.php?id=89&notes=true "Reunion Tour" Digital Liner Notes on Anti.com.] ] The album was released on both compact disc and vinyl record. [ [http://www.anti.com/catalog.php?id=89&notes=true "Reunion Tour" Digital Liner Notes on Anti.com.] ]

The album was produced by Ian Blurton, who previously produced "Left and Leaving" and "Reconstruction Site" for the band. Blurton has described the album as the band's most experimental to date, [ [http://uptownmag.com/archive/music/07apr26.htm Uptownmag.com Feature.] ] and guitarist Stephen Carroll told "Uptown" that the album features "lots of ambient stuff, tape loops, and some more keyboard than before". [ [http://uptownmag.com/archive/music/07apr26.htm Uptownmag.com Feature.] ]

Prior to the album's release, the band released mock "webisodes" about the making of the record on the Epitaph Records website. [ [http://www.epitaph.com/artists/artist/137 Weakerthans webisodes. Under the "just in" tab on the left-hand side.] ]

Chart performance

The album 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 lead single, "Civil Twilight", reached #1 on CBC Radio 3's "R3-30" chart the week of November 15, 2007, making the Weakerthans the first band ever to have two different singles top that chart. (The band's first chart-topper was its cover of Rheostatics "Bad Time to Be Poor", from the spring 2007 compilation album "The Secret Sessions".) "Civil Twilight" was also the #1 single on the network's year-end Top 100 chart, beating out Arcade Fire's "Intervention" at #2.

Awards and nominations

The album was nominated for the 2008 Polaris Music Prize. [ [http://www.polarismusicprize.ca/ Polaris Music Prize] ]

Track listing

# "Civil Twilight" – 3:17
# "Hymn of the Medical Oddity" – 3:08
# "Relative Surplus Value" – 2:37
# "Tournament of Hearts" – 3:34
# "Virtute the Cat Explains Her Departure" – 4:08
# "Elegy for Gump Worsley" – 2:43
# "Sun in an Empty Room" – 4:00
# "Night Windows" – 4:35
# "Bigfoot!" – 2:23
# "Reunion Tour" – 2:07
# "Utilities" – 4:34

ong notes

"Civil Twilight"
*The song is written from the perspective of a Winnipeg Transit bus driver.
*"My Confusion Corner commuters are cursing the cold away..." Confusion Corner refers to the [http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~wyatt/alltime/pics/winnipeg-OsborneJct1999-2apr.jpgintersection] of Osbourne Street and Pembina Highway in Winnipeg, which is infamous for its difficulty in navigating correctly due to a complex web of turning ramps and transit-only lanes.

"Hymn of the Medical Oddity"
*The song is about David Reimer, [ [http://www.burningheart.com/bands/index.php?id=253 burningheart.com ] ] a Winnipeg man who became a "queer experiment" when, after a botched childhood circumcision destroyed his penis, his parents were convinced by controversial psychiatrist John Money to raise him as a girl and allow Money to study "her" as a test case in social construction theories of gender. Reimer committed suicide in 2004.
*"...and ask St. Boniface and St. Vital / Preserve me from my past..." Two jurisdictions of Winnipeg are named after these saints, owing to the city's heavy French history.

"Relative Surplus Value"
*Surplus value is a Marxist term for the profit derived by capitalists from unpaid labour. For example, if an employee is paid $10 an hour but produces $40 worth of goods in that time, his employer has received $30 in surplus value since the worker has "not" been paid the full value of his output.
*The song is written from the perspective of a man who has just been fired from his job. In an early live performance of the song on college radio station KUCI in Irvine, California, Samson described the song as being about the dot-com bust.

"Tournament of Hearts"
*The Scotties Tournament of Hearts is Canada's annual women's curling championship. The song is written from the perspective of a man who spends all his free time at the curling rink, partly out of his love of the sport and partly because of communication problems in his marriage: "Why, why can't I draw right up to what I want to say? Why can't I ever stop where I want to stay? I slide right through the day, I'm always throwing hack weight."
*"Tournament of Hearts" was also the title of the third album by The Constantines, which that band released soon after touring with The Weakerthans in 2003. In an interview with CBC Radio 3 to promote the release of "Reunion Tour", Samson claimed that the Constantines chose the album title at his urging.

"Virtute the Cat Explains Her Departure"
*This is the second song the band has written from the point of view of Virtute, a cat. The first was "Plea from a Cat Named Virtute", which appeared on the previous album "Reconstruction Site".

"Elegy for Gump Worsley"
*Gump Worsley was a Canadian hockey player who died in 2007. He is viewed as a punk sports icon, having also inspired the Huevos Rancheros song "Gump Worsley's Lament" and the title of Sons of Freedom's 1991 album "Gump".

"Bigfoot!"
*The song is written from the perspective of Bobby Clarke, a driver on the Nelson Channel ferry near Norway House, Manitoba, who captured a two-and-a-half minute video of an alleged Bigfoot sighting in 2005. [ [http://www.cokemachineglow.com/reviews/weakerthans_reuniontour2007.html Cokemachineglow] ]

"Utilities"
*A different rendition of "Utilities" was previously recorded for the Canadian edition of the 2006 compilation album "".

Personnel

*Stephen Carroll – guitars, vocals, pedal steel, keyboards
*John K. Samson – vocals, guitars, keyboards
*Greg Smith – bass, vocals, keyboards
*Jason Tait – drums, percussion, vibes, glockenspiel, keyboards, banjo, loops
*Michael Barth – trumpet ("Reunion Tour", "Bigfoot!")
*Tyler Greenleaf – trombone ("Reunion Tour", "Bigfoot!")
*Izabella Budai – flute ("Reunion Tour")
*Sean Dealey – additional snare rolls ("Reunion Tour")
*Julie Penner – trumpet ("Elegy for Gump Worsley") [ [http://www.anti.com/catalog/view/89/Reunion_Tour/?notes=true "Reunion Tour" Digital Liner Notes on Anti.com.] ]

References