The Weakerthans: Left & Leaving (2LP+CD) [ANTI]

Why you'll love it

This edition spreads Left and Leaving across a 2LP set and adds the album on CD. Chart magazine's 2005 poll ranked it sixth among the greatest Canadian albums of all time, and it earned a Juno nomination for Alternative Album of the Year.

This edition

• 2LP set
• CD included

About the album

Plenty of bands write about home. Few have ever made a city sound as tender, funny and lonely as The Weakerthans make Winnipeg sound here. John K. Samson and the band recorded the album at Private Ear Studios in Winnipeg in February 2000, then finished and mixed it at Chemical Sound in Toronto that April with producer Ian Blurton, and it first came out on Winnipeg's G7 Welcoming Committee.

"Aside" is a jangling, big-hearted rocker (it later turned up in the film Wedding Crashers), "Watermark" and "Pamphleteer" are quietly heartbreaking, "Without Mythologies" and the title track are pure poetry, and "My Favourite Chords" closes things on a swell of warmth. In between, "This Is a Fire Door Never Leave Open" and "Elegy for Elsabet" keep the quality high from first side to last.

Epitaph took the album on in 2007, which kept it in print for a new generation. A punked-up version of the closer later surfaced as My Favourite Power Chords, proof that even the gentlest song in Manitoba can be persuaded to turn the amp up.

Also at Kops: more The Weakerthans on vinyl · browse CDN Pop / Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Epitaph / Anti- (cat# 86920-1), a reissue of the 2000 album.