• Record Label: Fat Cat
  • Release Date: Oct 3, 2006
Metascore
76

Generally favorable reviews - based on 15 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 12 out of 15
  2. Negative: 0 out of 15
  1. The record is no departure, but when the form is this strong one isn’t needed.
  2. A quintessential collection of the kind of subtle contrasts and ambiguity that makes her such a fascinating songwriter.
  3. On Leaving has an elegiac delicacy; it’s an album to make you weep.
  4. Her words read and speak like a haunting.
  5. Uncut
    80
    Neither beholden to tradition nor self-consciously moderne, she crafts skeletal songs of great warmth and grace. [Oct 2006, p.117]
  6. Under The Radar
    80
    A dark tour de force of a master songwriter. [#15]
  7. Mojo
    80
    An exercise in economy. [Dec 2006, p.120]
  8. After Run to Ruin, it's difficult to hear Nastasia pull back to a songwriter-with-guitar style.
  9. The majority of Nastasia’s guitar-and-piano bit parts are full bodied and masterful, overshadowing many big-footed leading ladies’ recent folk releases.
  10. Q Magazine
    70
    [It] finds her on familiar territory, offering 12 concise yet fully realised vignettes. [Oct 2006, p.124]
  11. If that same sense of insularity and reserve -- magnified by Nastasia's pitch-perfect, inflectionless soprano -- keeps On Leaving from connecting like it could have, the music draws you in, even at its slowest and starkest.
  12. With all due respect to Mr. Albini, perhaps it’s time Nastasia broadened her collaborative horizons.
  13. Paste Magazine
    60
    Her voice isn't a particularly versatile instrument, but it radiates a certain dignity and keeps the focus on her well-crafted songs. [Nov 2006, p.85]
  14. The lyrics lack the indirectness of so much of The Blackened Air and Road to Ruin, just as the piano-embroidered instrumentation skims the surface of what the singer’s band once plumbed with all of its clawing and scraping.
User Score
8.3

Universal acclaim- based on 8 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 8
  2. Negative: 0 out of 8
  1. stevew
    Oct 22, 2006
    8
    lovely stuff
  2. jd
    Oct 5, 2006
    8
    An intensely crafted work of raw emotion.