Pitchfork

Curling is a people's game, but while the Canadian women's curling championship, the Tournament of Hearts, is a professional competition, there are no full-time pro-curlers. Ontario's Constantines, too, counterbalance their work-- their allusiveness and unblunted riffs-- with a rough-hewn populism. Their songs might conjure the ghosts of Italian futurists, obscure 50s casualties, or Rod Stewart, but they ultimately bleed with love, rock 'n' roll, and the booze-stained nights that follow workaday days. The band's self-titled debut clamored for the death of rock music, while 2003's equally impressive Shine a Light saw a great band building its dank, proletarian vision, dancing through alleyways, too drunk to steer or to stop.

Third album Tournament of Hearts stumbles to its factory job the next morning, shakes out the cobwebs, and turns the radio dial to classic rock. It's gentler than its predecessors, relying on sweat and unresolved tension rather than a glorious gutter-poet deluge, though the change is more of subtleties than of substance. Here, the band consecrates not the grand passions of Shine a Light but the everyday labors of nurses, phone operators, and working stiffs "from Herald Square to the heavens, earth, and sea."

In depicting ordinary people, the Constantines unabashedly evoke bands that ordinary people might like. "Working Fulltime", inspired by the work of 93-year-old Chicago journalist and oral historian Studs Terkel, nods toward Bachman-Turner Overdrive in its title and simple, power-chord refrain, then dives into a G'n'R twin-guitar breakdown. "We will not be undersold," singer/guitarists Bry Webb and Steve Lambke grimly chant, after insisting, "We wake up every morning full of wonder." The album's most immediate track, "Soon Enough", is nearly as direct and overpowering as Shine a Light's immortal "On to You", but with a soft, countrified strum rather than its predecessor's punk-derived tumult. "Work and love will make a man out of you," Webb repeats, his still-throaty vocals sounding as subdued as the arrangement.

It's not that Tournament of Hearts doesn't rock, but it's more constrained, finding power in withheld but ever-imminent explosions. Opener "Draw Us Lines" drones over a single guitar chord, name-dropping San Francisco eco-witch Starhawk over pounding drums out of a pagan ritual. "Hotline Operator"-- not to be confused with the Nighttime/Anytime EP's same-named instrumental-- builds pressure with whispery choruses before a final, all-too-brief double-time coda and anguished wail. A few of the tracks draw on the sludge-rock side of former tourmates Oneida, such as the greasy guitar of "Lizaveta", which also revisits "Insectivora" horns. Elsewhere, the looser "Good Nurse" puts the band's recent stint as Neil Young cover band Horsey Craze to good use. But the most unrestrained track is standout "Love in Fear", with its elliptical bass and guitars whining like sirens, as Webb implores, "Just kiss me on a rooftop.../ Under helicopters of desire."

Lambke, who provided lead vocals on Shine a Light's jagged "Scoundrel Babes", takes the forefront twice on Tournament. His thin, unprojected voice is in stark contrast with Webb's Greg Dulli-like gruffness, though the lyrics about abattoirs and life in the city on the cool, horn-laden "Thieves" could just as easily come out of Webb's mouth. Acoustic closer "Windy Road" is a brave misstep, shooting for Iron & Wine but ending up someplace whinier, despite the Constantines' usual lyrical prowess: "Best get new dreams/ These old dreams won't last," Lambke murmurs.

The metaphorical battle-of-sexes resonance of Tournament of Hearts is obvious, but curling is also a deeply Canadian sport. Webb sings of "pissing rain" and "the weird winds of Ontario" as his songs detail Canadian blue-collar paycheck-to-paycheck. Amid the glacial guitar strums and funereal percussion of "You Are a Conductor", the penultimate track, he bestows upon his subjects what working life sometimes takes away: control, or, more specifically, the ability to direct one's own path, like a curler's broom hurrying hard to make way for the rock (the rock!). "Shamble on," Webb moans, more softly than ever.