By Fred Mills

Listening to this comprehensive anthology (make that "representative," as not even a 79-minute CD can completely trace the massive trajectory of Seattle’s alt-country orchestral-rock legends), I keep coming back to that subtly existential lyric query from '60s song "To Sir With Love": "But how do you thank someone/Who has taken you from crayons to perfume?" Between Carla Torgerson's haunted warble and Chris Eckman's stained rasp—not to mention an otherworldly, noir-informed pop aesthetic that marries Morricone to Lynch, Roxy Music to Tindersticks, Lee Hazlewood to R.E.M.—there are lessons we can learn about life, love and yeah, even leaving, too. As Watermarks linernotesman (and MAGNET masthead mainstay) Prof. Jud Cost observes, "The Walkabouts had the mojo hand upon them." Indeed, they still do. How then, should I thank them? Thrice—one, for their sorrow, because they remain pop prophets without acclaim in their own homeland; two, for their sweat, as they’ve toiled long and hard for more than a decade, in the process crafting countless long-playing gems of stark, lasting beauty; and three, for the strange things, and sonic mysteries, I'll never forget. My light will always be on—to the Walkabouts, with love.

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