Track List­ing:

Disc One:

1. Intro
2. Uncom­fort­ably Numb **
3. Alicia Amnesia
4. Summer Jam
5. Too Famous to Get Dressed
6. Maybe It’s Just Me **
7. Bethamphetamine **
8. Ladies and Gen­tle­men, The Let’s Go Out Tonights
9. Dont’ Move **
10. Indie Queen **
11. Far Away From Close

Disc Two:

1. Over Your Head
2. Race Cars & Goth Rock **
3. Mixtape **
4. Stateline **
5. Sober **
6. Joan **
7. Cig­a­rette Lighter Love Song **
8. Best Thing You Never Had **
9. Hot Girls in Good Moods
10. Lights Out
11. Canyons

**Clear Favorites

Now there are cer­tain artists that sound good on albums but come up short in live shows. There are other artists that rock live per­for­mances like they were born to it, but fail to trans­late this to their record­ings (Live ones aside, obvi­ously). Then there are artists that do both excep­tion­ally well. This is where Butch Walker falls. I have had the unde­ni­able priv­i­lege to be lit­er­ally two feet away from the man as he per­formed a live show at the Horse­shoe Tavern in Toronto a while back. Until then I had only heard his albums (Let­ters, This Is Me… Jus­ti­fied and Stripped, Left of Self-​Centered) and was already a big fan.

Then he started singing in that little Tavern. The true test of an artist really comes down to how close their live and recorded per­for­mances match up. Butch Walker sounds the same, other than chang­ing it up a little in the live shows just because he can. Leavin’ the Game on Luckie Street is the second live album that I’ve heard by Mr. Walker and I can hap­pily say that I am still in love with his work.

The album is actu­ally split up between two discs (two discs for free, dear Lord) and have dras­ti­cally dif­fer­ent feels. I’ve decided to talk about them sep­a­rately because of this.

Disc one is jumpy. I don’t mean in a spazzy sort of way, but in the “get the fuck up and dance” sort of jumpy. You listen to that first disc and you just want to get up and dance the hell out of your shoes, socks, or even your bare feet. This CD has many tracks from the Butch/LGOT album, yet also fea­tures some tracks from Mar­velous 3 (a band he was for­mally a part of). The only slow track on the first half is Don’t Move, so time will fly as you bounce around lis­ten­ing to it. It’s solid and fun, though to be honest I was never as big a fan of the Butch/LGOT album in com­par­i­son to his solo work.

Enter disc two.

Disc two is easily one my favorite cds of all time, regard­less of the fact that it. It fea­tures a lot more of his solo work though it also fea­tures tracks from the Butch/LGOT and Mar­velous 3 albums. This half of the album is way more toned down, and fea­tures a lot of Butch’s piano work­ings. As a result there is a string of songs Mix­tape to Best Think You Never Had that all fea­ture Butch at the piano singing. Even after that there are a couple more tracks that are slower, and if I have to be honest, a tad depress­ing. This man does depress­ing songs in a fan­tas­tic way that don’t make you feel sad, but seem to offer a sense of clo­sure or reflec­tion that I cannot get enough of. This will prob­a­bly become one of my staple ‘chill’ cds, and those are rare on my play list. Only high rollers make it to that list. What can I say? I’m picky.

Both cds make up the album in a rather Ying/Yang sort of feel, which can be jar­ring for some­one who is switch­ing between the two of them with­out know­ing it. They also seem to suffer from a bit of vari­able audio. What I mean by this is that in cer­tain parts, the audio is fan­tas­tic but suf­fers in others, coming in quiet or the singing being drowned out by other instru­ments at times. There are also points where he is obvi­ously swing­ing to and from the mic, which can get annoy­ing if you’re trying to enjoy the song.

A great album and worth get­ting. Six dol­lars is a fan­tas­tic price to pay for any album, and this one exceeds even that. It’s worth lis­ten­ing to, and though not the best album to intro­duce your­self to his work (I sug­gest Let­ters), for those who already know about him, this is a fan­tas­tic addi­tion to the library.

8.5/10