[The New Classics is a reoccurring segment in which we examine our favorite indie releases that are bound to replace our parent’s “classic rock” stash hidden in the attic or the basement. These aren’t reviews, these are uneditied testimonies and opinions about why we love what we love. Can we get a witness?]

Artist: Constantines
Album:Tournament of Hearts
Released: 2005
Label: Three Gut/Sub Pop

Words by Christopher Carosi

There is a particular love affair we have for this band that’s probably as simple as their approach to their music: loud, honest, blue collar rock & roll about sensitive souls in transition in an environment that devalues “value” itself. This, their third release, is my personal favorite because of how it showed the band had a vision beyond the crush of barroom rock & roll (not that that’s bad), leaning themselves out (or in) to some more progressive song structure and texture. The band would return to a strictly anthemic sound for their Arts & Crafts debut three years later (the excellent Kensington Heights). At just over 35 minutes and 10 tracks, Tournament of Hearts is a streamlined and cohesive listen, each song is a vital component of the whole. At its conclusion, Tournament’s synergy is a feeling of emotional release and bittersweet complexity, from the point of view of a passionate, marginalized working class.

Constantines / Hotline Operator
Constantines / Soon Enough
Constantines / You Are a Conductor

I remember when this band came to town in the winter of 2008. They played the Thunderbird Café after The Obits, the Thunderbird fucking Café. Drunk on Pabst pounders (I seem to recall they were being sold for 75 cents? Or was that Pabst Light?), Matt, Jim, and myself stomped, shook, fist-pumped, sang horribly, hugged, and probably fuck-yeah’d through their entire set, right in frontman Bryan Webb’s snarling grille. I recall fondly, after roaring through “Credit River” (a track from Kensington Heights) to open the set, Webb remarked quickly, tuning up for the next song: “This is already the best show we’ve played on this tour.” The night was ours, and they destroyed the set. It was a highly, highly remarkable show and still one of the best live performances I’ve ever seen. I also remember drunkenly taunting them for losing the Winnipeg Jets to Phoenix and getting (I kid you not) a full minute soul-freezing stare from their drummer, Doug MacGregor, as he played. Why the fuck did I heckle one of my favorite bands? No clue.

I remember looking up the show schedule for that tour and I noticed they never went below the Mason-Dixon Line, scattering their shows across the Northern U.S. and Southern Canada. The reason why I even relate this story in the first place is that this band and Pittsburgh (or any Rust Belt city) are married, in the very core of their sound, their lyric, and their overall care for what they do (have done). Whatever soul that is restless or will be restless in youth culture in this hemisphere, because of angst or civil strife or the blues or whatever (sorry art school bands), this band represents that to the fullest, while being completely contemporary and fresh, and building their whole project off of that self-consciousness. To me, few bands get this close to demonstrating “that great gospel jest called rock & roll” while calling out any one who refutes it, as if pointing at naysayers of the term on the street, saying, “As long as we are dying, we want the death of rock & roll!” No one can imagine to turn it down when it’s this loud.

Tournament of Hearts is a stepping stone to the deeper moments of Constantines music, where the realities of “the scene” or the idea of rock & roll (explored in their first two records) begin to reflect the culture outside of the song, where characters are present and where (gasp!) love is hoisted as the Jolly Roger. Now, the idea of love as a point of resistance is intensely attractive to me, with some of these songs acting as messages in a bottle to some secret collective of sensitive people who want to breathe mystery back into the pavement-covered earth. No, not hippies. The idea is to repeal the idea of the world the newspapers want to sell you, to provide a path (or a “Line”) through to a meeting ground, through the “fiery designs” we provide, and to reclaim the spaces we take for granted (in between our bodies, behind the buildings). This music is bursting with joy of the world, but held in check by its hard edge and cigarette-smoking noise. So I guess it is punk-informed spirit-bound rock & roll. Meh, it doesn’t matter, it’s really good is what I’m saying.

The first two tracks, “Draw Us Lines” and “Hotline Operator,” are sisters in dynamics, where this band’s three-guitar-might is held down with a subtle rhythm played softly and along the edges of the snare. “Hotline Operator” could be a tribute to an odd-job, or a flirtation with the possibility the night can bring, with disaster on the horizon. Webb sings, “Sing dissemblers, sing Lazarus, stand on ceremony. For us with lust it’s only motivation”. The song dives into a pool of bass and crooning guitar, as Webb and his mates sing the title with a hushed voice. The next verse comes and it’s clear that there is certainly some sexual energy being held down here, Webb screaming out from the tight rhythm, “You’re a way, an un-chainer! You’re a hotline operator!” The song builds and builds, the verse being repeated. The band finally reaches the thrashing point, Webb hollars, “You’re a hotline operator! Ooh, do me a favor!” The collapse is imminent in some fashion, something dangerous, something climactic, something! Then suddenly, the song cuts its own life support right at the vein and track 2 is over. This very simple meeting ground of content and high-energy rock & roll dynamics is exhaustingly specific to me, and with this body of noise, it cuts right through to basic desires.

“Love in Fear” has a danceable anxiety to it, with angular guitars and more lyric about unrequited love (and lust, which is an important grouping, the self-defeat imminent in the male psyche). “What hangs above, when we love, love in fear?” This time, the song seems to be about love between two people as a possible escape from the commodities posted all over downtown. Here, as in “Lizaveta”, there is the idea of a relationship in contrast with the outside world. The mantra from the sludgy “Lizaveta” is as follows: “In that evil hour, without defense, be sensitive, you were born to live.” “Soon Enough” reaches further into this, the song being gentle in sound (ringing guitars, a slight country & western vibe, yawning organ, scampering drums) and the message is to rise up in sadness, “Soon enough, work and love will make a man out of you.” This song could be great as a breakup thingy or as an end-of-the-world thingy, wiping the tears away with a callused hand (ahem, manly tears, mind you). But “Working Full-Time” puts Side B on a more lateral move across the blue collar environment where these songs take place. So the message of “work and love” is catapulted back to the people, and the song itself drives harder than any of the songs before it, this time with a full blazing chorus. Oh, what an awesome song.

“Good Nurse” rides just alongside it, much more easily about a specific person (named in the song, “Sheryl Lynne”). Reminds me of Animaniacs, hellooooo nurse! But more intellectually, it provides that earthly care and joy to support the rusty spine of the working class heroes.

The album has two conclusions. The first is “You Are a Conductor”, a fire-breathing anthem of how powerful the human body is, how much of a leap it truly is just by stepping out the front door in the morning. “Shamble on, Anarchy, battles to come. It’s for us, ghosts of reason, vows of confusion.” This song is the energy of mystery that is threaded in every fiber of our society, and the ongoing strength that will never die, that “voice of the voiceless”, the shambling ghost of the people. “Windy Road” seems a cinematic ending, a faintly cowboy song, quietly performed and decidedly outside of the traffic noise of the city. These two together are a slap in the ass for good luck and a hat to shield your eyes from the desert sun. Both are about brotherhood/sisterhood.

This album, like the rest of Cons’ criminally underrated catalogue, is really really fucking good. It is somewhat cool that this is the case, and the band will still surprise others down the years, some kid rifling through the CDs at Paul’s and being drawn in by the cover art: embossed lettering standing straight among the jagged rocks. This is bound to happen, the band being on “hiatus” and all.

That being said, tell your friends, tell your wife, tell your kids! Tournament of Hearts gets 20 out of 20 cheap beers for the broken-hearted, and this line from “Soon Enough” that sums up the defeat of the romantic man perfectly: “Your gentleman father would pray for a daughter as he walked from room-to-room saying, ‘Women are winning the Tournament of Hearts, somebody’s gotta lose.” Ouch, babe, ouch.

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We love this album so much. We love Constantines with all our bleeding hearts. I mean, come on, we named this whole sinking ship after the 1st song of the album. Dedication. Admiration. If you feel like you need to be in on the secret, pick up Tournament of Hearts at INSOUND and holy Lord, you won’t be disappointed. If and when you do listen, crack a beer for us gents at DUL. We’ll appreciate it.

Filed under: Mind Blowing, New Classics, Not Blake, Jim, or Brendan