Various Artists – One Great Tribute! A Love Letter To The Weakerthans

Winnipeg alt/indie gem The Weakerthans is an undeniable fixture in Canadian music.  The soft spoken prairie dwellers enjoyed a gradual rise to fame in the late 90’s that blossomed into international recognition by the mid 00’s.  The band’s decision to fade from relevancy and enter hiatus after the release of their 2007 full length, Reunion Tour, is perplexing, but cements the group’s four full length albums as genre benchmarks few have achieved.  Their popularity and brief career together begs comparison to other short lived but highly revered indie outfits like Neutral Milk Hotel, making any and all new happenings related to the band exciting and hotly anticipated.

Where there is a beloved band, the cult of fandom is never far behind.  Weakerthans fan and enthusiast Mike Robichaud decided to channel his love for the band into a tribute compilation with all proceeds going towards the CAMH (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health) & CMHA (Canadian Mental Health Association).  Robichaud launched the project as a crowdfunded endeavour with open submissions to artists around the globe. The result is a collection of tracks reciprocating the gift that The Weakerthans gave the world, with submissions ranging from British folk sensation Frank Turner to the twangy country melody of Indiana’s own Austin Lucas.

Composed of twenty-three tracks pulling from across The Weakerthans discography, One Great Tribute! A love letter to The Weakerthans is an ambitious project to say the least.  And when you consider that The Weaktherthans only really have around fifty tracks to their name across four albums, we’re talking about a body of work containing just shy of half of the band’s career output.  Generally speaking, the songs all remain fairly close to the source material, more often than not slowing things down rather than speeding them up – although each artist clearly honours the legacy with their own twist.

With twenty-three songs it’s not practical to comments on each, so it’s easiest to focus on a collection of highlights and common trends.  For starters, there’s no better way to open such an event than through the emotional finesse of Franks Turner’s familiar voice.  In opener “Bigfoot” Turner channels the song’s careful craftsmanship as if singing perched on a piano stool with painstaking attention planted upon each key’s gentle note.  It’s a real treat and Turner makes each lyric feel like his own heartfelt reflection. Austin Lucas’ rendition of “Anchorless” is a casual dose of alt-country that captures the original’s grace while infusing a southern footprint.  As a huge fan of Have Gun, Will Travel I was particularly excited to hear the band cover “Psalm For The Elks Lodge Last Call.” The indie-folk troupe’s smoothly delivered country chords and minimalist vocals echo traits of John Samson in the original, but with enough uniqueness to instill new life.  Other guy-with-an-acoustic-guitar-and minimalist-backing-band inclusions come from Dain Griffin, My Crooked Teeth, Todd Farrell Jr. Featuring Camille Faulkner and The Adventuring Party, among others.

One of the most pleasant surprises comes in the form of “Night Windows” as covered by Kascha. Existing in the realm of soft spoken female fronted alt/indie, the band’s beautiful vocals enhance the charm of the original against a memorable backdrop of rhythmic clicking vivid lyrical imagery.  I can’t find much (if anything) on Kascha, but this is a magical cover that should get noticed in a big way.  Two other Weaktherthans staples that get covered back to back by female fronted bands includes a double dose of Virtue the Cat.  “A Plea From Virtue the Cat” introduces the world to this unforgettable feline in descriptive imagery from the cat’s point of view.  Billy ‘The Kid’ Pittiger’s cover tugs at listeners’ heartstrings, perfectly matching the now classic lyrical plead by Virtue to its owner for understanding.  The sense of weighted piano led sadness juxtaposes well with the cutesy, hopeful delivery of Early Riser’s following rendition of “Virtute The Cat Explains Her Departure.”  Each playfully explored lyric captures the curiosity and adventure of “scrapping with the ferals and the tabbies” as if Virtue herself entered the studio.  The track ends on a particularly epic violin led chorus that is unlike anything you might imagine in a Weaktherthans song. 

Then there’s a sense of musical diversity that includes many from the alternative and punk scene contributing to the party.  Wayfarer covers “Exiles Among You” and Cold Wrecks tackles an invigorating and refreshingly sloppy rendition of “Watermark.”  While the first half of the album is composed of the most faithfully captured and original covers of Weakerthans classics, the second half assumes a more experimental vibe.  For example, Lowest of the Low provides an upstroke toting ska reimagining of “Pamphleteer.”  It’s like a jolt of life on the operating table to The Weakerthans often subdued and reserved style.  Meanwhile, Sky Wallace makes “Without Mythologies” feel like some sort of Feist-inspired dose of intense electro-indie, and Neon Skyline transforms “This is a Fire Door Never Leave It Open” into the next swirling light show of 80s synth rock ready for the next Stranger Things soundtrack.  These are cool, imaginative versions that in straying from safety, exemplify how many genres The Weakerthans have influenced over the years.  

At twenty-three tracks One Great Tribute! A love letter to The Weakerthans is an impractically long listen, but one in which you’re thankful for the contribution of each artist.  The compilation is very consistently enjoyable, with pleasant little surprises surfacing across the entire track list.  For that reason, I recommend that listeners that don’t find themselves with a long commute or free time to listen to the cumulative eighty minute runtime in a single sitting to treat it like a double LP.  There’s no more natural of a place to take a break than on than Early Riser’s cover of “Virtute The Cat Explains Her Departure,” and no better place to pick back up on than Charlie Webber’s highly stylized take on “Left and Leaving.”  All in all, One Great Tribute! A love letter to The Weakerthans is like experiencing your favourite Weakerthans tracks for the first time – with all the magic you remember.  Getting two albums worth of Weakerthans covers all at once is a real treat, and knowing that proceeds are going to a worthy cause is a most Canadian way to recognize one of Canada’s greatest modern musical treasures.