Posted on: March 13, 2010 Posted by: anfnewsacct Comments: 0

For those of you that are not familiar, Carissa’s Wierd was a much beloved Seattle band operating in the late 90s and early 00s alongside bands like Modest Mouse, 764-Hero and Iron & Wine (as the story goes, Ben Bridwell of Carissa’s Weird and later Band of Horses was the first to pass Iron & Wine demos along to his friends at Sub Pop). At their most basic Carissa’s Wierd was a collaboration between dual singer / guitarist / songwriters Mat Brooke and Jenn Ghetto – in various forms and with various lineups they released a trio of studio albums and a couple of collections of odds and ends between 2000 and 2003, and played their last show at the Crocodile Café in Seattle in November of that year.

While many of the bands they were friends with and played shows with would go on to become household names, Carissa’s Wierd was more or less a cult favorite with a fiercely loyal (and borderline obsessive) fan-base in Seattle and an ever-increasing national profile. After amicably going their separate ways the members of Carissa’s Wierd have played apart and together as Grand Archives, S, Sera Cahoone and perhaps most notably Band of Horses – the wider success of these projects in many ways justified what fans of Carissa’s Wierd knew all along.

On July 13th Hardly Art will be releasing a retrospective compilation called They’ll Only Miss You When You Leave: Songs 1996-2003 and eventually reissuing the band’s three studio albums – Ugly but Honest, You Should Be at Home Here and Songs about Leaving. These titles are all out of print and difficult to find and have never previously been available on vinyl or digitally. In perhaps the most exciting news of all, the band plans to reunite to play at least one Seattle-area show around the release of the retrospective.

*misspelling intentional

They’ll Only Miss You When You Leave: Songs 1996 – 2003

1. Low Budget Slow Motion Soundtrack Song For the Leaving Scene
2. Die
3. The Color That Your Eyes Changed With the Color of Your Hair
4. One Night Stand
5. You Should Be Hated Here
6. Drunk with the Only Saints I Know
7. Phantom Fireworks
8. So You Wanna Be A Superhero
9. Brooke Daniels’ Tiny Broken Fingers
10. Ignorant Piece of Shit
11. Blessed Arms That Hold You Tight, Freezing Cold and Alone
12. Blue Champagne Glass
13. September Come Take This Heart Away
14. All Apologies and Smiles, Yours Truly, Ugly Valentine
15. Sympathy Bush
16. They’ll Only Miss You When You Leave

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