Song Review
Tonight’s song comes to us from the Winnipeg, Manitoba indie/folk-rock band The Weakerthans. Civil Twilight can be found on the band’s fourth full-length album Reunion Tour, released in September of 2007. The album was among an impressive group of short-listed releases for the 2008 Polaris Prize, which would ultimately be awarded to Caribou’s Andorra. Though my love of The Weakerthans tends to ebb and flow, I’ve always felt a strong familiarity with the band’s lyrics. Civil Twilight is no different, as it delves into the disgusting experience of not being able to remove an ex from your mind.
My confusion corner commuters are cursing the cold away
As December tries to dissemble the length of their working day
And they bite their mitts off to show me transfers, deposit change
and I can’t stop finding your face in their faces, all rearranged
and angry like you never were;
And I ease us back into traffic
dusk comes on and I wonder why
I’m always remembering you
in civil twilight
for the most part I think about golfing and constantly calculate
all the seconds left in the minutes, and so on, etcetera
Or recite the names of provinces and Hollywood actors;
Oh, Ontario! Oh, Jennifer Jason Leigh!
This part of the day bewilders me
Streets slow down and ice over,
Dusk comes on and I struggle to stop,
To stop to stop thinking of you
In civil twilight
Hey, every other hour I pass that house,
Where you told me that you had to go
I wonder if the landlord has fixed the crack,
That I stared at, instead of staring back at you;
My chance to say something seemed so brief
It wasn’t. Now I know I had plenty of time
Between the sunset and certified darkness
Dusk comes on and I follow the exhaust from memory up to the end
The civil twilight
The civil twilight
The civil twilight
The civil twilight
