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our retired explorer
Aug. 14th, 2021 07:25 pmSome months ago, the Spotify algorithm dropped the Weakerthans' "Our Retired Explorer (Dines with Michel Foucault in Paris)" into a playlist for me. Proving that algorithms aren't always wrong.
I'm giving two links: the first is to a live version (no video) and the second is to the album version, with video. I strongly recommend listening to the live version first. The video is cool, but it puts the song in a very different and much grimmer context.
Nothing else by the Weakerthans has delighted me as much as this song (for a minute, I thought I'd found a new--to me--favorite band). You know how the Decemberists have a lot of really unexpected, strange, glorious songs, and then every once in a while they just decide to do a love song? And it's a good love song, a clever love song, but it's not as amazing as their other stuff? That's what the Weakerthans seem to be like, except the ratio is reversed: a lot of good, clever love songs, and a few weird ones I like a lot, and then this ridiculous masterpiece. (Yes, I do have a tiny favorite subgenre of music I call "Songs about people whose work I read in graduate school." There's this, and the Magnetic Fields' "The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure" and a few others.)
So, here's the video-less live version:
And then the video of the album version:
I'm giving two links: the first is to a live version (no video) and the second is to the album version, with video. I strongly recommend listening to the live version first. The video is cool, but it puts the song in a very different and much grimmer context.
Nothing else by the Weakerthans has delighted me as much as this song (for a minute, I thought I'd found a new--to me--favorite band). You know how the Decemberists have a lot of really unexpected, strange, glorious songs, and then every once in a while they just decide to do a love song? And it's a good love song, a clever love song, but it's not as amazing as their other stuff? That's what the Weakerthans seem to be like, except the ratio is reversed: a lot of good, clever love songs, and a few weird ones I like a lot, and then this ridiculous masterpiece. (Yes, I do have a tiny favorite subgenre of music I call "Songs about people whose work I read in graduate school." There's this, and the Magnetic Fields' "The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure" and a few others.)
So, here's the video-less live version:
And then the video of the album version:
