Constantines' album Shine a Light shot out of Ontario, Canada, in 2003 like a musket ball of rock and punk. It's been rolling thunder ever since. The songs charge at you rowdy and tight from a piston-fired impetus of bass and drums. Crankshaft guitars in their oil pan light off Bryan Webb's graveled howl. "Make your love too wild for words, stumbling through the city with the ordinary birds," he blares in "Young Lions." If you're isolated, Constantines' music makes a mettle-filled companion. If you're with a crowd, the crowd gets raucous. If you're driving across South Dakota or Kansas, Constantines work well on repeat. Out of print on vinyl since 2007, Shine a Light was reissued by Sub Pop this past June, featuring a newly cut vinyl master, a 7-inch of B-sides, and the original gatefold artwork rephotographed to show how it aged in basements over the last 11 years. Constantines are touring again as well, and for that, the hammer and anvil in our ears are thankful. Bryan Webb spoke from his home in Guelph, in southern Ontario.
What American city would you compare Guelph to?
Imagine a smaller, Canadian version of Portland. Guelph is weirder than most of its surrounding cities of comparable size. We're about an hour from Toronto. There are a few lakes nearby, and a fair amount of hippies.
Where does the sound of your voice come from? I've always liked the way it sounds—the tone, the intonation, the gravelly-ness. When I'm on imaginary battlefields, I hear your voice screaming out orders.
I grew up screaming and yelling over loud punk and hardcore bands [laughs]. With the Constantines, we got more into singing with melody, but the amps were still big. This is just what my voice sounds like when I try to sing over really loud music.
In "Young Lions" you sing, "Empty mickey by the river, shining like a broken halo." I've always assumed that's Mickey's beer. Where were you when you wrote it?
I wrote the lyrics for that song sitting by the Speed River in Guelph. Someone had left an empty bottle of vodka in the bushes on the riverbank. A mickey is Canadian slang for a 375 ml bottle of alcohol. It seemed like a great artifact of youth—a hidden empty bottle of booze, shining in the sun by a river.
How do you siphon lyrics out of your head?
I don't have a process, other than always writing things down in little notebooks when I hear a word or phrase that I like. Eventually I sit down and try to piece together all of the bits and pieces I've written down over a few months. Occasionally I'll sit and write out an entire song with a clear idea from start to finish, but that wasn't often the case with Constantines' lyrics. "Young Lions" was one of those. I was agitated by the feeling of getting older, I went out for a walk, sat down by the river, and saw an empty bottle in the bushes.
What instrument did you write "Young Lions" on?
That was one of the few songs that was written on an acoustic guitar. It was this mellow thing for a little while, and then we made it as loud as possible. I very clearly remember recording it. We were all playing in the same room in a studio on the Danforth in Toronto, and everything was distorted and loud. Our friend Nate was sitting on a couch in the same room, and at the end of that take, he goes, "Whoa."
In the song "Poison," what are you referencing with the line "Last night at some Scarborough disco, another empty pocket took a fall"?
There was a shooting at a club in Scarborough, a news story I had heard. It wasn't a firsthand story. I was pretty fascinated by popular dance clubs and the culture around them at the time. How the violence and the meat-market aspects were pretty inherent. They seemed like spaces where these manifestations of some dangerous parts of human bodies and minds would be set loose.
Then you say: "No dogtooth trigger will poison us. No sinister blade will poison us."
A trigger just looks kind of like a dogtooth, right? Both of those were references to the weapons that seemed to be part of that club culture I was referring to. Trying to express an implicit danger, and a resistance to that part of a city's nightlife.
What do you remember about recording that one?
A lot of those songs were written by jamming together in a rehearsal space down by the waterfront of Toronto in an area called Cherry Beach, which had no beach. We would jam out a part until we came up with another part, and so on, then Steve [Lambke] or I would try to write lyrics for it.
Constantines took some time off. Now you're playing again. How does it feel? What's new about it?
It feels great. It's been nice to find that the same energy is still there between us. The show at Sappyfest in Sackville, New Brunswick, has been my favorite so far. People were stage diving and crowd surfing constantly through that entire show, and thankfully there were as many women up there as dudes. That's a significant difference from then to now: more crowd surfing, apparently [laughs]. There's a new awareness between the five of us of what we have, as well. We've all played in other situations over the past four years, and coming back to play together, it's pretty apparent that we have a unique understanding of each other's playing. If anything, there's more trust and confidence between us now than ever before.
What's not new about it?
We don't have any new songs yet, and our haircuts are pretty much unchanged. Doug [MacGregor] still wears the same Mayhem shirt at most shows.
What about touring are you looking forward to?
Seeing folks I haven't seen in a while. I'm a family man, and before this summer, I wasn't getting out much. We're playing with old friends in a lot of cases—Ladyhawk on the West Coast of Canada are one of my favorite bands. So many of the people that we used to play with have continued to make great records since we saw them last. Have you heard Jennifer Castle's new album, Pink City? It's a complete masterpiece. A classic. So getting to reconnect with people like that, and give them high fives in person. Plus we get to play with a few incredible newer bands, like Cousins. And the Lonely Parade—they're in their teens, and they're mind-blowing. They sound a bit like that band Kleenex, or Lilliput, without any awareness of who that band is. They're pretty exciting.
What are you not looking forward to?
Having to turn down the occasional show to keep things manageable and balanced with our individual responsibilities. I have a 3-year-old son at home and a day job, so I can't really hit the road for three weeks at a time these days. The Cons never liked to turn down a show, so it's a bit tricky to come to terms with that reality.
Off the top, what are your thoughts on the Shine a Light reissue?
Over the last four years, I was really surprised to learn that the original LPs were so sought after. I'm glad that anyone who wants one can get one again. And I'm thrilled with Dallas Wehrle's work on the artwork. When we made the album initially, Dallas and I made the collages—I put the lyrics together with little gold letter stickers, and Dallas did everything else—on these giant four-by-eight-foot pieces of plywood or drywall. When the idea came up to reissue it, Dallas said, "I have the original collages, and they've aged beautifully." So he was able to photograph the original cover material 11 years later, and the passing of time is pretty apparent. Dallas has always been great at design concepts like that. Beyond that, reconnecting with Sub Pop has been wonderful. I've missed them a lot.
Didn't it hail one year when Constantines played Sasquatch!?
For an hour before our set that day, we watched two storm fronts heading in from opposite horizons. They converged when we started playing, and the backdrop for our show was a lightning and hail storm. We played five songs to a devoted audience who were completely blasted by hail, and then the mixing board blew up. There were literally piles of hail all over the stage. That was one of our best shows.
What have you put out recently?
I've made a few records under my own name, with a label called Idée Fixe out of Toronto. Dallas's other band, Deloro, who are amazing, are on that label, too. The other stuff I do is pretty mellow. It's nice to have Constantines back in my life to balance that out.
I know Constantines are into physics word problems. If you get this one right, you win an imaginary iPod Shuffle that you can clip on your sleeve and go fuckin' nuts with. Here it is: Phyllis has recently learned to drive. One day, she finds herself going the wrong way on a one-way street. But it turns out she's doing nothing wrong or illegal. How is this possible?
That's physics? Steve is really our physics guy.
Phyllis isn't driving. If she's walking, she's not breaking any rules. Enjoy your iPod Shuffle. Go nuts.
Ah, Phyllis. Thanks. 
