The Weakerthans are a musical group who make me get very serious about rock and roll. Their fourth album, Reunion Tour, was released a couple of weeks ago.
Whenever a band I really love is about to release an album, I get very nervous that I will not like it (blame Weezer for this), but this album is everything it is supposed to be: poetic, gentle, rocking; full of hope, love, and brokenness. You can read my review at Idol Chatter.
But there is one song on the album I simply can't listen to. Some years ago I mentioned the Weakerthans track "Plea from a Cat Named Virtute," which is one of the best songs I'd heard in years. It's a cat giving her depressed owner a pep talk. This cat, man, you don't even know. Her words are so full of tenderness and pity:
All you ever want to do is drink and watch TV. And frankly, that thing doesn't really interest me. I swear I'm gonna bite you hard and taste your tinny blood if you don't stop the self-defeating lies you've been repeating since the day you brought me home. I know you're strong.
Virtute is some perceptive cat, y'all. And we hear from her again on Reunion Tour, this time narrating "Virtute the Cat Explains Her Departure."
Boy. Can I even put this into words? How ought I exegete this delicate ballad of Things Forever Lost, this nostalgia through sound, this anguished meow of a heartfelt guitar solo? John K. Samson once managed, somehow, to make optimism feline. And now this cat, this song, they have become something else: a leaden-hearted remembrance of the once-but-never-again and the subsequent emptiness of the chest cavity; the bitter thanksgiving of having once known love and warmth and security, even now, when it is gone and the loss is so complete it is almost imperceptible.
"It had something to do with the rain," the song begins. Three minutes later, I am inevitably in tears, and not for anything specific – not for old friends, or lost love, or the past – but for all of this and none of this, because of this line and the way the drums build up and the way Samson sings it:
I can't remember the sound that you found for me.
I think I've only listened to this song three times. I'm not sure I will ever listen to it again.
1 comment:
i can't listen to it anymore either. i searched the song title hoping to find someone else who had the same reaction as me, so thanks for you, because i found your entry. i've been trying to put a word to what it is about the song that makes me cry, and all i can come up with is failure and innocence. fuck.
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