Canadian “folk punk” quartet the Weakerthans specialize in what lead singer and lyricist John Samson calls “first-person fiction.” Heartfelt, intimate lyrics convey the stories of characters who are at once singular but familiar in their innate humanity. Through four albums of such tales, the Weakerthans have been weaving a kind of folk history of modern Canada for the past 11 years. Take, for example, their latest record, Reunion Tour. On this album they tell the stories—real and imagined—of a Winnipeg bus driver whose assigned route takes him past his ex-lover’s house every other hour (“Civil Twilight”); of Bobby Clarke, a Manitoba ferry operator who filmed sasquatch in 2005 and was subsequently mocked and ridiculed by the world (Bigfoot!”); and of David Reimer, a Winnipeg native who was born a boy but raised a girl as part of a tragic medical experiment (“Hymn of the Medical Oddity”). The musical backdrop for all of these tales is an increasingly low-key, punk-based rock that alternates between folk and country influences. The Weakerthans may have incorporated tape loops and synthesizers into their latest music, but they haven’t put down the banjo, glockenspiel and Wurlitzers that take their sound out of the straight-up punk genre and plant it firmly in its own remarkable category of head-bobbing Canadian folk-punk. They perform this Sunday night with Alabama native indie rocker A.A. Bondy and John Samson’s minimalist folk-rocker wife, Christine Fellows.
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