WINNIPEG - Local icons The Weakerthans haven’t settled on a name for their new album yet, but from the sounds of it, Men Behaving Badly might be a good fit.

“It’s a record about men,” says frontman John K. Samson of the project, tentatively slated for an October release. “But not terribly likable men.”

And of course, it’s Samson we’re talking about — he of the highly literate, internationally acclaimed songwriting style — so there’s considerably more going on. At least, certainly more than earlier rumblings from the Weakerthans’ label, which characterized the pending work as “less conceptual and more like a collection of songs,” would seem to suggest.

“There is a very strong narrative that runs through the record,” Samson says. “It’s our most fictional record, in that I was trying to get inside the elements of these characters that I didn’t necessarily like.

“And it’s also a very visual record. The lyrics have a lot of visual elements — elements of humanity that aren’t necessarily the elements that we all cherish.

“So (there are) ideas of greed and market forces and what those do to human beings, not only the citizens who are mistreated by capitalism, but what they do to those doing the mistreating.”

The album will be The Weakerthans’ fourth full-length, and will see them paired once again with producer Ian Blurton, who also worked the boards on Reconstruction Site (2003) and Left and Leaving (2000).

The band has already spent two weeks laying down tracks in an industrial park “on the edge of the city in the middle of the night,” as Samson puts it, and are now putting the finishing touches on the tracks before moving onto the mixing stage.

While Reconstruction Site was recorded in Toronto — which is where bandmates Jason Tait and Greg Smith call home — it was important that the new disc be hashed out here in Winnipeg, Samson says.

“It did feel like the location was important ... and it really felt like (the songs) were of that place,” says Samson of the St. Boniface studio. “It seems like that part of the city has a real role in the work now.”

The band initially hit the studio fearing they wouldn’t have enough material for a full album, but quickly realized they had a surplus of songs.

Fans can get a sneak peek of the new tracks during the Weakerthans’ show at Garrick Centre this weekend, part of the eight-day Núna (now) cultural exchange between Manitoba and Iceland.

“Both are really isolated places,” says Samson, whose father is very active in the Icelandic community. “And both have vibrant artistic communities that are surprising for the number of people there are.

“People are always surprised by the number of bands and musicians and artists in Manitoba, and the same is true, probably even more so, in Iceland.”

Tickets to the show are $24.50 @ Ticketmaster (www.ticketmaster.ca or 780-3333).