The Weakerthans - One Chord To Another

Review: Jim Bryson & The Weakerthans – The Falcon Lake Incident

December 3, 2010 1 Comment

Jim Bryson & The Weakerthans: The Falcon Lake Incident (Maple Music, 2010)

Jim Bryson is a canadian folk singer-songwriter who has teamed up with one of the best bands in the world, The Weakerthans. Last winter they packed their gear and and travelled to Falcon Lake, Manitoba and spent six days in a cottage recording this beautiful album. Based on the press photos, the weather was extremely cold, but the end result of these recordings still sounds quite warm and very comfortable. Even so comfortable that I’m smiling also during the heartbreaking moments. I’m just in love with the overall feel of the record. It sounds very down-to-earth, but still has a lot of depth & detail. The song material is mostly amazing as well. Beautiful folk songs are the centerpoints, but Jim Bryson also has a good pop sense. For example Metal Girls is just a great folky pop song. Only minor issue that I have is that the quality of the material drops a tiny bit during the last third of the album and especially Up All Night and Decidedly seem “only good” to me. Of course, It’s mostly because I got too used to the almost perfect quality of the first half of this extremely lovely record.

Jim Bryson Website
Jim Bryson at myspace

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbA89cLxBYQ]

Review: The Weakerthans – Live at The Burton Cummings Theatre

The Weakerthans: Live at The Burton Cummings Theatre CD+DVD (Epitaph, 2010)

I don’t care much for live albums and hardly ever buy them. This time I had to make an exception, because The Weakerthans is one of the greatest bands on the planet. Live at The Burton Cummings Theatre captures The Weakerthans in stunning form. The whole thing looks and sounds absolutely perfect. Heck, it sounds so good that you might not even realise that you are listening to a live recording if it’s just playing on the background. The concert was recorded last april in Winnipeg and the set list has songs from all of their albums albeit the focus is obviously on the last two albums. I won’t go into more detail, because a) I’m lazy b) if you don’t know them, you probably won’t start by purchasing a live album c) if you do know them, you know how fantastic they are. So the only reason for this review was to notify that such a release is out and available. It almost flew under my radar..

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ4SvAe6r7Y]

The Weakerthans Website
The Weakerthans at myspace