Bay Area Record Spotlight: Weekend “Sports”
Here’s the second feature from my new monthly column highlighting great local albums. For my latest piece, I focus on the transcendent debut release from San Francisco post-punk trio Weekend.
Arriving in late 2010, the album received universal praise and acted as a reminder that there was more to San Francisco than its famous garage rock scene. Led by songwriter Shaun Durkan, “Sports” distilled all the best parts of My Bloody Valentine and Joy Division into a strangely accessible post-punk masterpiece.
Read all about their landmark inaugural record here:
Man, that opening track.
First the drums come marching in, setting a deliberate and ominous tone. Then the staccato guitar spikes saunter along—plinking motions that skitter and crawl in parallel to the percussion. Next up are the softly haunting wordless melodies, adding an extra layer of atmospherics, before an absolute fucking wall of feedback and noise clearly states the epically ambitious scope of the creation.
Yeah—as far as first songs go, it’s hard to top the soaring heights of “Coma Summer,” the perfectly honed post-punk treatise featured in Weekend’s debut album, “Sports.” If you’re one of the few people who still listen to albums from front-to-finish (hi!), there is nothing quite like an indelible opening track—a mission statement and preview for what’s on tap. And “Coma Summer” is the perfect tone-setter for “Sports”—one of the best albums to ever come from the Bay Area.
Even though I shared a hometown with this trio—composed of vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Shaun Durkan, guitarist Kevin Johnson and drummer Abe Pedroza—the first time I had heard of Weekend was when I read Pitchfork’s laudatory review of “Sports.” It took me only moments of listening to the album to know that it was instant classic (also, that fucking album art! Are those keyhole glimpses into something menacing? Fiery comets travelling in opposing directions? An exit out through a dark, foreboding cave?)
Like all great post-punk bands, Weekend harnessed the volatile energy of guitar feedback into something approximating pop songs on “Sports.” Even at their most violent and amorphous, the tunes on “Sports” always gravitate towards an end point that is satisfying and fulfilling. Beneath the grit and dust and sludge is a sonic landscape replete with surprisingly accessible and approachable hooks and harmonies.
Take, for example, the two-track suite that makes up “Monday Morning” and “Monongah, WV” (a distant Appalachian town beset by coal mining tragedies. There are some seriously spooky backstories there.)
The former song is a billowing production of floating white noise, a constellation of imperceptible noises that distinctly feel like they are building to a crescendo—a future coda in the offing. That crest occurs in the latter track, which borrows the same melody as “Monday Morning” but maxes up the volume levels and pacing, taking a slow-burning space rock song and transforming it into a militant shoegaze anthem. By the end of that one-two punch, you’re ready to start karate kicking people (but in a fun, healthy way!)
And while audiophiles will love the attention to detail of those songs, there is truly no better way to experience the companion tracks than by watching the music video—a joyfully nihilistic look at suburban culture that ends with young and old subjects alike bathing and imbibing a dark, oily liquid (making for an honestly terrifying and stirring visual spectacle.)
Those three tracks alone, which make up the first four spots on the album, would make “Sports” an imminently memorable record, but the back half is just as formidable as the front. “Age Class” is in the vein of “Coma Summer,” a steadily escalating feedback ride that culminates with Durkan defiantly repeating the warning, “There’s something in our blood.” An argument could be made that “End Times,” the eighth track on the album, is the strongest of the bunch, as Durkan and company make their love for Joy Division clear in a number that feels like a lost track from “Unknown Pleasures.” The first time I heard that song, I thought, “whoa, these guys are fucking SERIOUS.”
The album closes with “Untitled,” an urgent, abrasive and pummeling piece of shoegaze that acts as the perfect companion piece for “Coma Summer,” bookending “Sports” in a way that reiterates again that snarling dissonance can be the unlikely handmaiden to beautiful moments of reverie. It was a lingering reminder of Weekend’s ability to infuse a fresh, exciting and unique perspective to the template laid out by The Jesus and Mary Chain—an attempt tried and failed by so many lesser bands.
Durkan’s lyrics are wondrously oblique and elliptical, with his vocals falling just a register below the wall of sound of his bandmates, adding an extra layer of interpretiveness to them. When he sings, “I awoke from a coma summer/Tell me you're true,” is that a hopeful declaration of devotion or an accusatory, defeated statement? There are little riddles like that throughout the album, with the narratives deftly straddling the balance between hope and despair.
There are countless nuggets that make this album special, but what really sets it apart is the band sounding so much more than the sum of its parts. Weekend are in lockstep throughout “Sports,” morphing from a lean trio of guitar, bass and drums into some kind of super instrument, a singular force that fills every aural square inch of the album with meaningful, measured noise.
In so many ways, Weekend illustrate the magic of the Bay Area ecosystem. Durkan, whose father Tom, fronted the great underground band, Half Church, grew up in the North Bay along with Johnson (the two first met in band practice in sixth grade.) They connected with Pedroza while attending college at the San Francisco Art Institute, and the trio all lived in San Francisco or Oakland for many years after officially forming as a band in 2009.
They were pals with other local like-minded acts like Tamaryn and Young Prisms and they were on the esteemed and beloved Oakland label, Slumberland Records. Coming of age in the late aughts and early 2010s, Weekend highlighted the stunning depth and breadth of the local music scene at the time, which also featured acts like Girls, Ty Segall, Mikal Cronin, Thee Oh Sees, Dominant Legs, Sonny and the Sunsets and countless others. Everything seemed geared in place to ensure that Weekend would take their place among the pantheon of durable, lasting Bay Area indie rock bands. Unfortunately, things haven’t quite gone according to plan.
Following the universally-positive response to “Sports,” Weekend toured relentlessly before putting out two follow-up efforts—the 2011 EP “Red” and the 2013 full-length, “Jinx” (the nickname of Durkan’s dad.) Both those albums are amazing, underrated gems, although they did not reach the critical heights of “Sports” (but seriously, go and listen to those releases again right now—they are stone cold classics.)
In 2013, Durkan, Johnson and Pedroza all moved to New York City, building upon a long-gestating dream to live in Brooklyn. The plan was to release more albums, capitalizing on the vibrant, burgeoning Williamsburg scene that was almost freakishly prolific and adventurous at the time.
As I’ve written about before, those dreams were waylaid by Durkan’s crippling drug addiction. He has since recovered—and in utterly inspiring fashion, replacing chemical dependencies with an affinity for trail running, fitness and the occasional candy splurge.
In the interim period since Weekend’s last release, Durkan has produced a number of albums and filled in as a touring musician for bands like Deafheaven and Soft Kill. He has now scored a somewhat unexpected success with Crushed, an awesome alt-rock outfit he formed with Bre Morrell. Crushed has released a full-length album and an EP—two splendid records that have garnered some really great critical praise.
While interviewing Durkan in 2020 for my story in the SF Weekly, I heard a sneak preview of the songs for Weekend’s still TBD third album. The brief snippets I was able to listen to were thrilling. The band sounded as vital, urgent, daring and skilled as I first remembered hearing them, some 10 years earlier. It was a tantalizing experience. But to date, Weekend’s third album is still unreleased.
I’ve spoken with Shaun many times over the years for various stories. He’s one of the nicest, most candid and accessible dudes I’ve ever interviewed. When we speak, I feel like he gives a slight wince at times, knowing that I’m going to bring up Weekend’s lost album, and I hate putting pressure on these guys. I’ve seriously gotten very Zen about everything at this point. Shaun is doing great things with Crushed, Kevin is playing in other outfits and living the good life in Vancouver and Abe was living aboard in Australia last I checked. Everyone in Weekend is doing fine and well.
It's just that, by listening to “Sports” repeatedly once again for this column, I’m reminded of the brilliance of this band. Hopefully, they regroup for that third album. If not, their legacy as a venerable San Francisco act will be forever secured by their blazingly magnificent debut release.
“Sports” by Weekend is available for purchase on Bandcamp here.