Why am I not a bigger fan of The Weakerthans? That was one of my first thoughts after leaving their free show at Livecity Downtown last night. Not to say I don't like the band. I have their latest album, Reunion Tour. I hear them on CBCR3 all the time. I've even seen them live before. But for some reason I guess I've always been more of a casual fan than anything. But after a pretty damn good show at Livecity Downtown last night, that may have to change.

Starting off with "Night Windows" and, of course dedicated to the curlers, "Tournament of Hearts" they went on to play for a little over an hour. They played most of the songs I knew from them, including the catchy "Sun in an Empty Room" -- which features one of my favourite lyrics: "parallelograms of light" -- and toasting us with the spoken word "Elegy for Gump Worsley", which is, as you might guess, about old goaltender Gump Worsley. Half way through the set, most of the band left, leaving John K Samson alone for "One Great City", which saw just about the whole room singing along, especially to the chorus proclaiming their hatred of Winnipeg. They ended the set with "Civil Twilight" and another song, which I didn't catch, but was a pretty great way to end the set.

There was the usual short encore tease before Samson came out alone again. He admitted he felt bad about forgetting some of the words in the last couple songs (which I didn't even notice) and felt as if he owed us... so reached into his pocket and handed a $10 bill to one of the people in the front row! After dedicating the song to both the volunteers and protesters of the olympics, and relating his pride of the guitar solo in the upcoming song (which we would know when he started playing with the "guitar solo face"), he launched in to "Utility". The rest of the band joined him mid-song; in time for his solo, which was pretty awesome. They ended the night with a couple more songs, managing to not only keep up the high energy they had throughout the set, but amplify it.

Even though it's my third time seeing them live (first time I saw them open for Feist, second I won tickets to their Rolling Tundra Revue with The Constantines) I was still blown away by how great they are. It seems every time I see them live I like them more & more, to the point where I think I am going to have to rectify my woeful underappreciation for this band.