THE DAMAGE IS DONE

For my birthday, I’ve decided to post another one of my My Top 10 Features Songs.

The Features
“Leave It All Behind”
Krampf Sessions (2002)

I often bragged back in the heyday of the Features Message Board that I could write a full essay about this song, and I guess this is as close to an opportunity for that as I’ll ever get. “Leave It All Behind” is a masterpiece, a song that perfectly encapsulates the worries and eventually triumphant feeling of, well, love. It doesn’t get much more romantic than pledging to leave everything in your life behind, needing only to be in the arms of the person you desperately need to spend the rest of your life with. It’s expertly paced as well. The way the song starts soft with Matt’s voice, the rest of the instruments coming a beat later, it’s cinematic how it feels like the protagonist of the song is slowly revealing his escape plan from the overwhelming world. The verse picks up speed when Roger’s meaty bass line comes in. Roger’s bass line in this song is superb, a true example of just how intricate his work is.

Roger is one of the best rock and roll bassists of all time, as far as I’m concerned.

Instead of just keeping the same bass line throughout, Roger changes it up from verse to verse, chorus to chorus. The way his bass surges in the second verse just before the bridge and chrous is genius, his bass acts restless and ready to bust free just like the lyrics imply.

The chorus is easily one of the band’s best. It’s instantly catchy and often causes people to sing along even if they’ve never heard the song before. It’s so joyful and twee, in every way that’s right.

The first verse of the song “Stick Together” would end up being transplanted onto “Leave It All Behind” in early 2001, and this new song would become a regular for the next five years. Of the 120 setlists I have in my database from 2000 until the band’s hiatus in 2006, the song was played 98 times. This makes it the second most played Features song during this time period, beating “Exorcising Demons” by just one appearance. Needless to say, “Leave It All Behind” was one of the band’s biggest songs. The song was first demoed with Craig Krampf in 2002 for reasons I’m not aware of. This version was the first released, and then the song was demoed again with a bit of a chorus extension at the end later that year. Those sessions, or perhaps all of those sessions, were either done as Exhibit A demos or as something to shop around to labels. “Leave It All Behind” made it’s way to Exhibit A and was released as a single. It hasn’t been played live much, or maybe at all, since early 2007.

A VERSION APPEARS ON:
Exhibit A, album release (2004)
Leave It All Behind, single release (2005)

LINEAGE:
Was “Stick Together” (same first verse)