The personal remains the political whichever way you want to cut it. Winnipeg's embody this ethic better than most on their second and long-awaited follow-up to their 1998 debut, . Splitting from Winnipeg's more , is following a more melodic and introspective path while retaining much of the politics. Constructed of vignettes of precise moments in time and place which manage nonetheless to speak volumes, deftly mixes social commentary with and . This is an intelligent, literate album, and a wordsmith the likes of or . There is the nice turn of phrase with the line "I am your pamphleteer" referring as much to an absent loved one as to the listener, and on sings that he relies "a bit too heavily on alcohol and irony." While describes the disposed among us whom we step over and dare not make eye contact with, the album is never heavy-handed, but simply illustrative of another way of life, the path not chosen or hopefully avoided, especially on tunes like is as well-played an album as it is written. Produced by , musically is equal parts . There are dashes of , a touch of , and a tasty guitar solo on Coming out of the blue collar city of Winnipeg, the images ring true, reminding us that in this fevered era of technology, the people who actually produce the stuff consumed remain much as they always have, rarely seen and rarer still heard. ~ Chris Grimshaw