Music City Mayhem Round 21: Levi Weaver vs The Weakenders

The Contenders

In the left corner: round 10 winner Levi Weaver. This guy has a solid amount of material for a relatively new artist - two LPs, one live album, and two EPs to be exact. There was no way I was going to get through all of that in time to churn this out, so I decided to do a somewhat random sampling of material from each. With colorful titles such as "We're Tornadoes When We Dance," "I Am Certain I Am a Train," and "Dead Best Friends," Levi's songs were hard to choose between. As I did begin to sample the buffet, though, I began to notice that the relatively polished "Talk Me Down" isn't totally typical of the rest of Levi's work. Levi is a singer/songwriter's singer/songwriter. His songs are wildly intelligent and expertly crafted, and eschew pristine production in favor of intimacy and creativity. Wildly intelligent, by the way, is no exaggeration; name me one other singer-songwriter who covers string theory and Kurt Godel's incompleteness theorem in the same album. Most guys are fine with sticking to the boy-meets-girl formula, but not Levi. I was also impressed by the versatility in his voice; on songs such as "Family Feud" he bounces effortlessly from singer-songwriter fragility into full-throttle rock swagger. Anyway, I'm not at all trying to suggest that "Talk Me Down" is less intelligent or less well-written than Levi's other stuff - just that it sounds much more radio-ready. Which is great, because this guy deserves and needs to be heard.

In the right corner: round 9 winners The Weakenders. On first glance at The Weakender's bandcamp page, it looks as though they have a staggering amount of material for a brand new band. After doing some research, however, I discovered that they decided to release their debut LP Supermajor two songs at a time on A/B sides. This is a pretty cool idea - supposedly it was done to allow fans to take their time with the songs and construct their own track order (the songs were not released in the album order) - but I got overzealous and went straight for the full-length Supermajor. As it played through, I couldn't help but be impressed by these guys' ability to sound diverse within a solidly defined genre. They remain alt-country/rock throughout, but bounce between mellow Guster-influenced numbers, heavier Drive by Truckers/Ryan Adams rockers, and even some spacey MMJ-style noodling on occasion. I also still can't shake the Beatles vibe - and I'm not one to ever make that comparison. Something about they way he sings "ey-yi-uh-eyes" on "Sink or Swim," just makes me think of Lennon every time. Bravo, guys.

The Verdict

As the competition narrows down, it's getting harder and harder to make picks. I think that both of these contestants deserve to move on, and I imagine that both will find rotation in my car's CD player in the near future. Kind of like Round 19 (Adam Burrows vs Vitek), I think I'm going to have to resort to an auxiliary reason to vote for one over the other. So here we go: since I can't help but notice that singer-songwriters are over-represented in the elite eight so far, I'm going to give it to The Weakenders. I'd like to see at least a few bands in the final four, and I would love for the Weakenders to be one of them. Though I would also love for Levi to represent the singer-songwriters. Vote here.