weakercons!

Weakerthans and the Constantines
Thursday April 7th
Lee's Palace


Four sold out shows in 3 days at Lee's is no mean feat, and kudos to the Weakerthans and the Constantines for keeping to the plan and not bumping these shows to some kind of koolhausian one-off.

We arrived at Lee's last night just in time for the Cons, but ultimately the band wasn't able to hold the audience. This was in a way surprising given their kinda-sorta hometown status here, but the feel of the show quickly took the feel less of a co-headline as originally thought and more of a tiered act show.

Which I'm sure wasn't the intention to happen, but the crowd certainly was more voracious in response when John K Samson and company arrived on stage right around midnight. Opening with the triumphant the band played a full 60 minutes of material mostly from its latter two albums with its relatively new fembots-infused lineup.

The crowd was in full singalong mode, especially on Left & Leaving material but the new stuff also held on well. Of particular popularity was hit-that-never-quite-was The Reasons, which recently came off with a Juno nomination for best video (and director Benji Weinstein was in attendance last night). JKS also gave a shout-out to us Winnipeg ex-pats when introducing One Great City, which admittedley doesn't sound quite the same when played outside of that city.

One of the more time-defining moments of the show was during Aside, which as mentioned this week, was quoted by one Gord Downie during their Juno TV performance. The crowd yelled out 'Hip!' during that crucial line, and John K gave a smiling look of acknowledgement as if to say perhaps nothign more than, 'well, yeah.'