Album by accident
Weakerthans suddenly realized they’ve got a new disc on their hands
John Kendle

To hear guitarist Stephen Carroll tell it, The Weakerthans surprised even themselves when they entered a recording studio in January.

The intended-to-be-quick session was initially meant to document the “five or six” songs that Carroll, singer/guitarist John K. Samson, bassist Greg Smith and drummer Jason Tait were convinced would be part of a follow-up album to 2003’s Reconstruction Site.

“We had six days to track these songs, and when we were done our six days there were 11 or 12 songs on board,” Carroll says.

“So we booked another five or six days at the same studio for me and John to come back and finish our parts, then we booked another session in Toronto in early April to do some more overdubs and other fun stuff. And now it’s done.”

“It” is, rather unexpectedly, The Weakerthans’ fourth full-length studio recording, tentatively titled Reunion Tour.

Named for one of its songs, the album is slated for release this fall and will be supported by both the Epitaph and Anti- labels. It was recorded at Winnipeg’s Prairie Recording Company, owned and operated by Weakerthans’ sound tech Cam Loeppky and business partner Shawn Dealey, and at Junk Shop studio in Toronto, run by Dave MacKinnon of FemBots.

Ian Blurton, who helmed Left and Leaving and Reconstruction Site, once again served as producer.

“Ian said it’s our most experimental record,” Carroll says. “I think that’s because we didn’t have a lot of preconceived ideas of what the song structures should be and what the instrumentation should be. It was kind of throwing everything at them and seeing what stuck. There’s lots of ambient stuff, tape loops, and some more keyboard than before.”

The breakthrough from six songs to full album came about because the effervescent Blurton kept asking if the band had any other ideas, Carroll says.

“We reassessed three songs that we weren’t sure about and some songs were ones that John hadn’t even shown us yet, or that we’d heard but that we didn’t initially think were part of the record.

“Ian was constantly asking, ‘What else is there? Are there more songs? What is that?’

“It was really good having his energy there because if you look at songs too long you stop being able to see their potential. All you can see is what you perceive as their faults.

“So having some fresh energy changed our relationship to some of the old songs.”

Tunes such as Night Windows and Utilities, which have been part of the band’s live set for the past couple of years, will definitely be on the album, Carroll says.

“We restructured Utilities quite a bit, but John still has a guitar solo. He plays the same solo every time but, then again, so did Louis Armstrong…”

As he speaks, sitting over coffee at Bar I, Carroll says he’s yet to hear the final mixes of the recordings as producer Blurton and Daryl Smith (who mixed Left and Leaving) were just sitting down to do them at Smith’s studio in Victoria, B.C.

Other bands prefer to be involved at all stages, but Carroll says The Weakerthans feel no need attend mixing sessions.

“We look forward to the point at which we put it into someone else’s hands and our part is done,” he says. “At that point, we trust what we’ve done (in the studio) and we trust Ian to keep the vision of the thing intact.”

n n n

The Weakerthans April 28 show with Icelandic performers Fabula (a techno band) and Asdis (a spoken-word artist) is part of Nuna, an Iceland-Manitoba cultural festival which has been running in Winipeg since April 19.

Caelum Vatnsdal, a Nuna curator, also recommends catching singer Olof Arnald at the Skyview Ballroom in the Marlborough Hotel on April 29 at 8 p.m., right after you attend the collage party wrap at the Graffiti Gallery, featuring Gimli’s The Pap Smears and Gorgon, a Winnipeg act.