I am an undying champion of Winnipeg, Manitoba's Weakerthans. There are enough current songwriters capable of spinning complete yarns about colorful, defined characters in 4-minute pop structures to count on one hand, and John K. Samson gets the pointer finger.

The band's most recent effort, Reunion Tour, is a dense pack of understated gems, mostly about characters dealing with slow and undramatic disappointment, but with genuine humor and warmth in place of the judgment and pity that usually plagues the form. Civil Twilight is a bouncy rock tune sung from the perspective of a Winnipeg bus driver reflecting on a long past divorce. Bigfoot, based on the true story of a man in Northern Canada who became the subject of ridicule tourism for a run-in with the Sasquatch which, ridiculous or not, truly terrified him. "Sun In An Empty Room" is the standout among standouts in the collection.

PS Our sister site Newstalgia has something loud for Labor Day: Humble Pie from 1973.