John K. Samson is Manitoba’s de facto rock ‘n’ roll poet laureate, and he and The Weakerthans have arguably never been more on top of their game than on Left and Leaving. It’s the quintessential Winnipeg album, with the title itself representing a conflict heavy on the minds of the city’s youth, regardless of generation: leaving the frozen seclusion of big-but-still-small-town for something bigger and better, or being left behind. Eventually, the kids get older and the realization that it’s not necessarily the shops, the bars, or the venues that make a city great, but the people, blurs that line. Often, especially in the case of the River City, that epiphany sends the departed back home. But what happens when just one important person never comes back? At that point, an already haunted city takes on your own personal ghosts as well.Some of the city’s phantoms on the album only feel apparent now times have changed, with lines like “a specter’s haunting Albert Street” from “Pamphleteer.” When Left and Leaving was released in 2000 (on local independent label G7 Welcoming Committee), Winnipeg’s infamous and legendary punk room, The Royal Albert Arms Hotel (imagine The Horseshoe in Toronto but way, way grimier), was still operating, still putting on ear-shattering underground shows. Now, after ownership squabbles, bad luck, and worse management, the dive hasn’t functioned as live music venue in far too long. On the title track, Samson directly addresses the feeling someone might get coming back home to -40 degree weather on a bleak, grey day in December: “My city’s still breathing (but barely, it’s true) through buildings gone missing like teeth/the sidewalks are watching me think about you, sparkled with broken glass.” It’s not a completely defeated statement, although the somberness of the track might imply it. It’s a silent anger, something Winnipeggers know well: they can have so much love for their city, and it consistently lets them down. Sometimes, living there, you feel like there’s nothing left to do to save it, but keep trying anyway, as if some spectacular resilience and a fast hold to the belief things can get better will be enough. That’s the moment something’s gotta give, you’re left or you’re leaving.It’s that struggle, and the artful articulation of it, which makes Left and Leaving such an important record for Winnipeg, and an insight into the experience of living in such isolation. Samson even comes straight out and defines the album’s main contradiction in very simple terms on “This is a Firedoor (Never Leave Open)”: “I love this place, the enormous sky, and the faces, hands that I'm haunted by, so why can't I forgive these buildings, these frameworks labeled "Home"?” The album swims through this theme effortlessly, balanced by straight-up power-pop (“Aside,” also featured on the Wedding Crashers soundtrack, FYI), heavy “loud-quiet-loud” rock ‘n’ roll (“Exiles Among You”), and quiet, sparkling poetry (“History to the Defeated”).But for all its heaviness and conflict, the album’s quiet climax, “My Favourite Chords,” provides a snapshot into the creativity Winnipeggers use to deal with and forget about the isolation and the doldrums. Samson asks a girl to meet him after work at a construction site to tape notes to the heavy machines, “and bring your swiss-army knife, and a bottle of something, and I'll bring some spray paint and a new deck of cards.” It’s a reminder that no matter what might make it self-destruct, it’s still the people beside you in the city and the people haunting it that make it worth living in or unbearable. And we’re left to wonder at the end, as he asks her, “sing me a story I haven’t heard yet,” whether or not they meet that night, if one’s left and one’s leaving.@MattGeeWilliams is a writer in Toronto who left, and The Weakerthans make him nostalgic.
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