Carissa’s Wierd: They’ll Only Miss You When You Leave: Songs 1996-2003

In the late ’90s, Carissa’s Wierd dazzled the Northwest with a brooding take on chamber rock (think Grandaddy with strings), and this career-spanning retrospective collects 16 tracks from the band’s five studio albums. Songs like “Die” and “Ignorant Piece of Shit” are bloated, as the band tended to sound when it crammed too much into too few bars, but slower tracks like “Phantom Fireworks” and “One Night Stand,” do better. The band broke up in late 2003 and reformed, in part, as Band of Horses. These days, Ben Bridwell and Creighton Barrett are the only Carissa’s Wierd holdovers, but listening to this collection, the source of the new band’s penchant for lovely, downbeat moments becomes clear. The strength of Carissa’s Wierd was tenderness, and They’ll Only Miss You When You Leave highlights its best moments.