# "Avoid Trends and Cliches" - A Bad History of The Tragically Hip



## BadHouses (Oct 10, 2019)

This is the first post of what I hope will become a magnum opus of musical writing. Or just a little ditty about a band I like. In any case, inspired by the titans of the music forum, welcome to...



My plan is to explore the discography of the Tragically Hip. If I think I can handle it, I may tackle some of the side projects, solos, unreleased material, or compilations, but I doubt it.  The hope is that through methodical listening and research, I'll be able to share one of my favourite bands with you all and learn to love them even more myself, as well as give some of their newer music a fairer listen.

First, let's meet the band.

The Tragically Hip is a rock band from Kingston, Ontario.  Kingston is home to KP, which was one of the world's oldest operating prisons (1835 - 2013).  Kingston was also the first capital of Canada for about 3 years.

The Hip had a steady lineup since 1986 consisting of the following.

From left to right.
1. Johnny Fay - Drums (1984-2017)
2. Gord Downie - Vox, Lyrics (1984-2017)
3. Rob Baker - Guitar (1984-2017)
4. Gord Sinclair - Bass, Backing Vox (1984-2017)
5. Paul Langlois - Guitar, Backing Vox (1986-2017)

Other members (Not pictured):
Davis Manning - Apparently he played sax between 1984-1986. That's the first of many discoveries for me, I'm sure.

The Hip's musical stylings began very much blues and rock n' roll. The first couple albums were essentially designed to capture their live sound. By their third they branched out into alt-rock and pop with many forays into folk/country over the years.

The albums I plan on getting into are 1 EP, 13 LPs, and 1 live album:

The Tragically Hip (1987)
Up to Here (1989)
Road Apples (1991)
Fully Completely (1992)
Day for Night (1994)
Trouble at the Henhouse (1996)
Live Between Us (1997)
Phantom Power (1998)
Music @ Work (2000)
In Violet Light (2002)
In Between Evolution (2004)
World Container (2006)
We Are the Same (2009)
Now for Plan A (2012)
Man Machine Poem (2016)

These guys are ingrained in the Canadian psyche.  I remember in high school while we were being courted by universities, one visiting recruiter remarked that his walk from residence to class took "four tragically hip songs."

I'm going to give some impressions of the albums, mention which are my favorites, which I hate, and highlight at least one song per album. I won't give a numerical rating, because I'll agonize over them until I'm dead.

With all that said, wait patiently while I find the time to bang out the first installment.


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## Deleted member 56686 (Oct 10, 2019)

I don't have a lot of Tragically Hip but I did hear New Orleans Is Sinking which is quite awesome. Looking forward to your reviews.


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## Trollheart (Oct 10, 2019)

Excellent! Fresh victims for our ever-growing army of the undead!
Er, I mean, welcome to Journaltown! You are among the first to register your interest in our new, modern, desirable houses and as such we welcome you to our community, and hope you will be a productive and happy member.

Or, to put it another way, thanks for taking the plunge and not leaving Musty and I as the only ones putting in the hours here. Your sacrifice will not go unrewarded.* Hopefully now others will follow your example, and the floodgates will open. Not literally, because, you know, that would drown Journaltown and all its inhabitants... :lol:

* Legally, Mister Trollheart is not bound by this statement and he would like to make it clear that in fact your sacrifice _will _go unrewarded.


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## BadHouses (Oct 10, 2019)

Information comes from the album liner notes, Wikipedia, Google, and special mention goes to hipmuseum dot com.  All errata are entirely mine alone.  Also, this format’s pale imitation was consciously and unconsciously stolen from mrmustard615 and Trollheart.

We begin our journey in 1987 with a self-titled EP.

From the liner notes: “After thousands of hours on the road and hundreds of nights in clubs in small town Canada, we would like to thank our parents for their patience, and our friends and fans for their support.”



Roses never springs to life; They requires determination, care, grit, pruning, and a host of other ingredients allowing them to reach a glorious bloom.  This here is the seed, planted in the Ontario soil.  The Tragically Hip, with the lineup that would see them through the next 30 years, sets down an EP for 27ish minutes capturing the raw, live sound they toured with.  The recording has a distant sound I attribute to low budget recordings of that time.

The Hip are most known for their poetic, evocative, and mysterious lyrics penned mainly by Gord Downie.  On this initial run of songs, we don’t see but a hint of what’s to come.  I’ve never listened to every album sequentially and knowing what’s in store makes those hints more delicious than anybody could have known in 1987.

Songs here are boot-stompin’ bluesy rock, and I always find myself tapping and singing along.  Perfect bar tunes, filled with gang-vocals, twangin’ geetar, catchy choruses, and women who done me wrong. 
This album never charted, but was popular in Canada according to Wikipedia, though US airtime was limited to college stations.


*SONG HIGHLIGHTS*
Lyrically and musically, this whole thing feels very blue-collar.  “Last American Exit” has a quasi-patriotic couplet in the chorus:

“I’m on the last American exit to the Northland
I’m on the last American exit to my homeland”

But the group’s literary and historical references, while scant on this LP, do come through in the same track:

“You know you’ll probably cry like Caesar’s son when you’re found.”

I think my favourite song on the album is “Killing Time.”  It’s the rawest track, Gord’s voice is fantastic, the guitars have this real somber tone.  The whole thing has this foreboding growth and energy.
[video=youtube;Fthtn5m-uck]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fthtn5m-uck[/video]

Least favourite is “All-Canadian Surf Club.”  I find this a tepid closer, unfortunately.  This song is listed on the CD itself, but isn’t credited nor do the lyrics appear, in the booklet, which I didn’t notice until writing this.
*
Track List:*
Small Town Bringdown
Last American Exit
Killing Time
Evelyn
Cemetery Sideroad
I’m A Werewolf, Baby
Highway Girl
All-Canadian Surf Club



With all that said, wait patiently while I find the time to bang out the second installment.


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## BadHouses (Oct 10, 2019)

Information comes from the album liner notes, Wikipedia, Google, and special mention goes to hipmuseum dot com.  All errata are entirely mine alone.  Also, this format’s pale imitation was consciously and unconsciously stolen from mrmustard615 and Trollheart.

It’s 1989 (the year the storks dropped yours truly down the chimney) and it’s time to blow up.



Right off the hop, this album sounds cleaner than the previous.  It sounds more ambitious, more substantial, more creative, more this, more that, more everything!  As much as I enjoy the EP, from start to finish each song was strikingly similar to every other.  Not so with this outing.  You get some acoustic strings (“Boots or Hearts,” “38 Years Old”), a taste of honky-tonk, you get more playfulness with volume, you get more lyrical narrative (“38 Years Old”), you get songs with greater lyrical complexity and length, and you get some of the biggest Tragically Hip hits of all time that are still played literally every single day on radio stations from Clayoquot Sound to Cape Spear.

You get your “New Orleans is Sinking,” your “38 Years Old,” your “Boots or Hearts,” your “Blow at High Dough.”  Obviously, you’re nodding your head “Oh yeah, the big ones!”  And that’s just in the first half!  Okay, it’s front-loaded with all the hits, but the second half doesn’t disappoint. The second half is filled with downers, though, and includes the two weakest tracks, "Trickle Down" and "Another Midnight."

This album was huge.  They toured in Canada, the US, and made their European debut on this sucker.  In the first year it sold 100,000 copies and by 1990 it went gold.  By 1999 it would be certified diamond.  All in Canada!  It was their first album to get an American release, but while it was cruising to the top of the charts here in the Great White North, they never truly broke in the US.  By 1997, “only” 80 000 copies sold.  The lack of success in the US is of interest to many people, but I’m not one of them.  I mention it because it is curious.  Future albums would have the same result.  Oh well, this is the last I’ll speak of it.

*SONG HIGHLIGHTS*
There's so much strength on this album that I'm inclined to give a blurb on every single track.  I may start doing that with the next album, because it just keeps getting better from here.

While I love Gord’s cryptic lyrics, I’m a simple man and I’ve always preferred concrete narrative.  Gord’s gives me what I’m cravin’, and we get a poignant story on “38 Years Old.”  The song tells the tale of a prison escape from Millhaven Maximum Security Penitentiary in Ontario.  It’s a revenge story, wherein the man, 38 year-old Mike, killed the sunovabitch who raped his sister and went away for a long long time.  It’s told simply and beautifully, and Gord’s delivery is utterly essential to every word off this album.

“He’s 38 years old
Never kissed a girl.”

We get another downer in the closer “Opiated,” and again Gord’s delivery dares me to even try describing the profound, soul-rending sensation I get when listening to this guy.  If I could bottle that sensation, I’d could hire Elon Musk as my personal ball-washer.  Unlike the EP, this closer is powerful and leaves me wanting to start the whole thing over again.

“He bought two-fifths of lead-free gasoline
Said, the bottle is dusty, but my engine is clean
He bought a nice blue suit with the money he could find
If his bride didn't like it, St Peter wouldn't mind”

“You think the snake just dreams up the poison in his head”
[video=youtube;-1NNfBVCc10]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1NNfBVCc10[/video]
Visuals unrelated.

There’s only one song I don’t much care for.  “Trickle Down” is tucked near the end of the album.  It feels directionless, I simply don’t care for the tempo.  Compared to the soulful, creative, beautiful songs we’ve heard up until this track, it’s a let down.  I wouldn’t call it bad though.  More like its not my cuppa.  The other songs in this vein all do it better and more cleverly.

*TRACK LIST*
1. Blow at High Dough
2. I'll Believe in You (Or I'll Be Leaving You Tonight)
3. New Orleans Is Sinking
4. 38 Years Old
5. She Didn't Know
6. Boots or Hearts
7. Everytime You Go
8. When the Weight Comes Down
9. Trickle Down
10. Another Midnight
11. Opiated

With all that said, wait patiently while I find the time to bang out the third installment.


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## BadHouses (Oct 11, 2019)

Information comes from the album liner notes, Wikipedia, Google, and special mention goes to hipmuseum dot com.  All errata are entirely mine alone.  Also, this format’s pale imitation was consciously and unconsciously stolen from mrmustard615 and Trollheart.

The year is 1991 and the hits keep coming.

Tidbit: The working title during recording was _Saskadelphia._ Because they were signed to MCA USA, they were told to change it for being too Canadian.  Instead, they went with _Road Apples_ which, unbeknownst to MCA, is slang for horseshit.



A second diamond studio album.  No big deal.  This baby was recorded in the French Quarter way down in sweaty New Orleans.  The band’s website says “New Orleans is a lively town and we're sure the whole vibe down there is on this record.”  I can definitely see it, especially through the first half of the album.  The record starts with southern-twang guitar, followed by the lines “it gets so sticky down here.”

We’re still following some of the trends of the EP and first studio album, catching the energy of a live performance.  Things are straight-up and in-your-face, but again we have added layers and additional instrumentation, including accordion, piano, and tambourine per the liner notes.  Despite a rambunctious entrance, I find this album more laid-back than the two previous, which seems in keeping the New Orleans.  Nearly every note feels like it’s taking its sweet time.

The song-writing gets tighter here as well.  Rob Baker in particular is showcasing the nascent flexibility here on guitar, melding all these sounds into some great tunes and we get some solos, like the scorcher on “Born in the Water”.  The bass is used really well here too, and pops into the foreground on a number of occasions with a really fat, satisfying tone.   It was around this time that Gord Downie took over the lyrics entirely.  The EP had songs written by other members, but according to Baker:
“we’ll just start jamming, and Gord’ll flip through his book until he finds something that feels appropriate, rhythmically. And if we can get a good groove happening, then he just starts singing.” (source)

Gord gets obscure and, perhaps, obtuse at times.  It’s all oblique reference and esoteries. The man is an actual poet, with poems in anthologies and everything, so he's really showing his wordy craft.  The opener, “Little Bones”, for example:

“The long days of Shockley are gone
So is football Kennedy style
Famous last words taken all wrong
Wind up on the very same pile
$2.50 for a decade
And a buck and a half for a year
Happy hour, happy hour
Happy hour is here”

What’s he going on about? A subtler mind than mine probably knows.  He loves to pull from a wide range of sources then mash them together and he’ll revisit themes, ideas, or sources repeatedly.  “Cordelia,” for example, references Shakespeare quite plainly, and various references appear on the last album, and will remain a staple going forward.  Also:

From "Highway Girl" on the EP:
“Well she looked out her window when the police came
To see a big tin man dancing in the rain”

From "Cordelia" on _Road Apples_:
“Tin can man, dragging from a car
Just to see how alive you really are”

*SONG HIGHLIGHTS*
Without a doubt, my favourite track is “The Luxury.”  Its languid pace is set by the opening bass line, Gord’s vocals once again steal the show, moving from soft on the verses to full goat in the chorus.  His voice is often a love-or-hate affair.  It has these gorgeous piles of words that can move me even when I have no idea what they’re trying to convey.

“Prison-yard stares and fleur-de-lis tattoos
Cannibals are saving all their bones for soup
Eating with my fingers and sucking hulls of ships
My parasite don't deserve no better than this”

[video=youtube;p1DhDgDkG9M]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1DhDgDkG9M[/video]

Runner up is “Fiddler’s Green.”  This is an acoustic cut that sounds like an Irish folk song but was written by Gord as a lament for relative whose son died of a heart condition.  According to hipmuseum dot com, the song was never played live until 2006.  Tissues recommended.

“September Seventeen
For a girl I know it's Mother's Day
Here son has gone alee
And that's where he will stay”

I don’t think there’s a song on here I could call my least favourite.

*TRACK LIST*


Little Bones
Twist My Arm
Cordelia
The Luxury
Born in the Water
Long Time Running
Bring it all Back
Three Pistols
Fight
On the Verge
Fiddler’s Green
The Last of the Unplucked Gems



With all that said, wait patiently while I find the time to bang out the fourth installment.


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## BadHouses (Oct 12, 2019)

Information comes from the album liner notes, Wikipedia, Google, and special mention goes to hipmuseum dot com. All errata are entirely mine alone. Also, this format’s pale imitation was consciously and unconsciously stolen from mrmustard615 and Trollheart.

In '92, the Hip flew over the ocean blue.



The boys fly to England with a new fancy producer and state-of-the-art studio to record on a huge record label budget that, from what I’ve gathered from a few sources, is far less common nowadays.  This backing allowed them to build an album with all the resources they needed, including even wider array of instruments and a famous artist for the album cover.  It’s about time because, if I’m honest, their covers have been pretty lame up to this point.  Rob Baker claimed in an interview that the art alone was $30,000.

I said I wouldn’t mention the US thing, but during my research I found a great podcast that shed more light on that.  At the release of _Fully Completely_, apparently the record company pulled the plug on the marketing after… 2 weeks!  Records didn’t fly off the shelves, and they just wrote off the whole endeavor in the US lickety-split.

This is the quintessential Hip album and it’s easy to see why.  The mystery of the Hip, the maneuvers between driving, relaxed, and folksy songs meshes with a vastly expanded range of guitar and vocal sounds, on top of fantastic base lines and solid drumming, and Gord going full tilt on the lush and often dream-like lyricism, making this a joy from A to B.

Mystery feels like the perfect word here.  Every song is brimming with detail, oddities, heart, and passion.  Everybody is playing their heart out, and every song (with one possible exception) has an aspect that captivates, unnerves, repulses, confuses, calms, or excites you.  According to one interview, the process on this album was far different than just having everybody in a room and banging out the song.  With the experienced producer, the songs were constructed “instrument by instrument over five weeks,” and I think the layered, subtle feel to everything bears that process out.

The cover is a photocopy collage by artist Lieve Prins, and consists of a mix of images, most apparent being the nude females and the disembodied band members mashed into a “bacchanalian revelry”.  Even this feeds the mystery and unease, with the Picasso-esque contorted bodies and faces, and unsettling colour palette.  The actual piece is life-sized and noticeably assembled in squares.

This album is a complex piece of art deserving of dissection, and it being as massive as it is, plenty has been written about it.  Still, I feel a loving desire to pore through the songs and give my take.  While at the time of release they were not on my 3-year-old radar, discovering these songs entranced me for life.  They feel like the grout between the bricks as my life was built; an essential, foundational, critical, omnipresent, and necessary element.  There are not nearly enough adjectives to capture it.

This will have to be a two-parter.  I’ll be out of town for a few days, so I’ll spend that time listening and scribbling.

I'll leave you with the closer:
[video=youtube;3XtOoEqzILU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XtOoEqzILU[/video]


With all that said, wait patiently while I find the time to bang out the fourth-point-five installment.


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## BadHouses (Oct 14, 2019)

It was a turkey-less Thanksgiving, but well spent with family. In the commercial breaks of Speed and Die Hard 2, and during the autumn lined drive, I scratched out some thoughts about the songs.

*COURAGE (FOR HUGH MCLENNAN)*
The albums stomps into being with the iconic "Courage (for Hugh McLennan)." Who is Hugh McLennan you ask? He's a Canadian author who explored life, meaning, and existentialism in books that Gord was reading around this time. In particular, _The Watch That Ends the Night_ (1957).
The song even quotes the book (not quite verbatim):

"So there's no simple explanation 
For anything important any of us do. 
And yea the human tragedy 
Consists in the necessity 
Of living with the consequences
Under pressure, under pressure."

No rhyme here, but he breaks it up vocally into these great beats that works.  For more on these themes, see this exhibit.
The song is upbeat, which matches the exalting mood of the lyrics. It's a thinkin' man's YOLO.

*LOOKING FOR A PLACE TO HAPPEN*
Contrasting the positive outlook of the first song, we get a second, darker Canadian track. Here, we explore the encounter of the Europeans and the native Americans during the colonialism.

"Jacques Cartier, right this way
I'll put your coat up on the bed
Hey, man you've got the real bum's eye for clothes
And come on in, sit right down
No, you're not the first to show
We've all been here since God who knows"

We have this figure who is seizing his day, who is daring, and whose history is inextricable from the sadder side of North American history.

"I've got a job, I explore, I follow every little whiff
And I want my life to smell like this
To find a place, ancient race
The kind you'd like to gamble with"

*AT THE HUNDREDTH MERIDIAN*
The one hundredth meridian is the longitudinal line traditionally used to divide Canada into East and West, "where the Great Plains begin." This divide is akin to the north/south divide of the US, including the stereotypical associated politics.  In TV, people from oil-rich Alberta are often depicted identically to Texans. Bolo tie, ten-gallon hat, and cowboys boots included.

We get some lovely imagery here:

"Driving down a corduroy road
Wheat standing shoulder high
A ferris wheel is rusting
Off in the distance"

In 1999 my family drove from Ontario to Banff National Park in Alberta and this scene rings so true, especially in flat, agricultural Saskatchewan. Comedian Lorne Elliot once joked that if your dog ran off, you could see him run for days. Or, that if you wanted a map of Saskatchewan, you just need a piece of graph paper.

This is a great singable track filled with energy that swings from quiet to loud in grandiose movements. One of my favourite parts is the bridge which he shoots through really fast and its fun to sing while trying not to stumble over the syllables or lose your breath (though it's no Mari-Mac).

*PIGEON CAMERA*
Well, who's up for a little shameful incest? And WWI espionage? This track is like the ultimate Gord Downie topic mash-up. With such disparate subjects, how could anyone tie these things together? I think Downie does. The song is a quieter track than we've seen, but obviously gets stranger. 
Pigeon cameras were used to spy on enemy trenches during the Great War. The song touches on the conditioning required to ensure those pigeons come back with their precious intelligence, but notes that once they're in the air... Well, "by now they could be anywhere." 

Entwined with this historical curiosity is a tale of a brother and sister who are discovering "something they can no longer contain." Things unleashed, but going in the wrong direction?  Though I have no sisters, I've heard it's not uncommon for a young boy to spy on his sister in order to find out more about the opposite sex. 

*LIONIZED*
Probably my least favourite on this album. It's an enjoyable romp. I find this song comes and goes without much notice. I will say that title, as sung, is a little annoying.

*LOCKED IN THE TRUNK OF A CAR*
We return to a subtle mosaic of topics surrounding a theme. We open on a first-person account of a shark who has apparently swallowed a 16 century Conquistador.

In October 1970, La Front de la Liberation de Quebec abducted two men. One of those men was Pierre Laport. He was found dead in... You guessed it.  The rest of the song seems to follow this man who plans, abducts, and kills someone. After his act, he cannot help thinking about what he's done.

"Everyday I'm dumping the body." 

This murderer is trapped by his guilt, as the man was trapped in the trunk, and the soldier is trapped in the shark.  There's a lot to this song, and more info can be found at the hip museum if you want a rundown on major themes, but I adore this song. It's so ominous, it's seedy, and it's got some great lines.

"Morning broken out the backside of a truck stop" 

"Then I found a place, it's dark and it's rotted.
It's a cool, sweet kinda place where the copters won't spot it."

*WE'LL GO TOO* 
Another song that flits by, but not quite without notice. This one's has bunch of Gord-lines that I really enjoy, though they seem disparate and tossed together. It's entirely possible, knowing our pal Downie. This song is sold almost completely by God's delivery.

"To boldly clap in a room full of nothing
You never know, it could be one of those
Poignant evenings"

*FULLY COMPLETELY*
The title track brings the back momentum, and we get another lush track, with Gord and the backing vocals ringing with intensity. Especially:

"Either it'll move me, or it'll move right through me" 

A gorgeous track, through and through.

*FIFTY-MISSION CAP*
A party staple, though returning to the darkness possibilities in human life. The lyrics are taken verbatim from a hockey card, and tells the story of Bill Barilko, a Toronto Maple Leaf. The story implies a curse was laid over the team when Bill disappeared, which feels like a very common folk interpretation of events like this, infusing them with evil and superstition. 
A little slower, but again, the mystery oozes from with great swells in the chorus.

*WHEAT KINGS*
The acoustic cut off this album is likely their best ever. We keep with the sad and unfortunate themes. The song tells the true story of David Milgaard, a man falsely accused of murder. He served 23 years before exoneration.  This song, like this whole album, is rife with imagery:

"Sundown in the Paris of the Prairies
Wheat Kings have their treasures buried 
And all you hear are the rusty breezes 
Pushin' around a weather-vane Jesus"

The song brushes with the idea of a fickle and unaccountable media, and the public whom they can influence.

"Twenty years for nothing, well that's nothing new
No one's interested in something you didn't do" 

"Late breaking story on the CBC 
A nation whispers 'We always need that he'd go free'" 

*WHEREWITHAL*
Not my favourite, but a good song. The boys sidle up to punk rock with the blasting guitar.

*EL DORADO* 
A damn, strong closer once again. We take a lighter tone here, with a great recurring vocal hook that's a joy to sing:

"I'm tired of loving recovering loving recovering loving recovering"

Don't really know what this one's about it's fun.

* * *

If you made it this far through my rambling repetitions, bravo. This isn't even my favourite album.

With all that said, wait patiently while I find the time to bang out the fifth installment.


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## Deleted member 56686 (Oct 15, 2019)

I like how you did your review. It's a lot more detailed than mine are to be honest.

Interesting note on Locked in a Trunk of a Car. I was watching a rebroadcast of the 1970 World Series which, for some reason, was from CBC instead of NBC. They kept breaking in for news reports about the October Crisis. At that point, Laporte was still assumed to be alive. Of course I'm cursing at the TV because they broke into Boog Powell hitting a Home Run (yes, I'm an Orioles fan :lol: ).


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## BadHouses (Oct 17, 2019)

Information comes from the album liner notes, Wikipedia, Google, and special mention goes to hipmuseum dot com. All errata are entirely mine alone. Also, this format’s pale imitation was consciously and unconsciously stolen from mrmustard615 and Trollheart.

1994: A zenith year.



The darkness has been growing for years and here we find the Hip at their most somber, most surreal.  _Day for Night_ is brimming with strangeness and lyrical potency.  The guitar tones vary widely between tracks and the sounds we get are eerie and out there. It feels like they’ve recorded the leakage of an ersatz consciousness.

In my books this is number one.  Far and away, number one.  Every album so far contributes to this one.  We get the acoustic, we get the rocking, we get the country, we get the profundity.  But this time we’re slumming with strippers and prostitutes, we’re considering murdering our husbands, we’re drowning by the thousands at sea… we’re in the shit.

In 1994 the boys also had their biggest American appearance ever – They played two hit songs on SNL after fellow-Kingstonite Dan Aykroyd petitioned to have them perform.

*TRACK LIST*

*GRACE, TOO*
We stroll into the first cut, starting acoustic but adding some heavier sounds soon after.  The verses keep that tip-toe tempo until “I can guarantee” which suddenly brings down a storm.  Backing vocals are really brought forward here and I enjoy them a lot.

I was unaware, but this song loosely follows the plot of a film called “Double Indemnity” (1944), in which two people conspire to murder the husband of a femme-fatale.  Gord studied film in his younger days and every album is replete with film references, from plots and characters to film jargon like “tableau-vivant.”

*DAREDEVIL*
Whackadoos shooting Niagara Falls.  They did it.  Sometimes they lived, sometimes they died. This song seems like the ultimate “if your friends asked you to jump off a cliff, would you?”  The man isn’t merely in the barrel; he is being strapped in while filled with reticence and confusion.  He may be doing it for fame or attention, he may not be sure.  And all the onlookers without the nads to do what he does wonder why he would do this crazy thing.

We have a rollicking track here, which seems appropriate given the subject.  If you set this song to someone going down rapids, I think it would be perfect.

*GREASY JUNGLE*
The city at night after the rain.  Didn’t really know what this one was about until research.  It was written, along with another track farther down, for a friend of the family who passed away.  It seems to follow our protagonist who moves through the wake, and later the house of the man who died.  The gymnast outside the window is his daughter.

He may also be referring to the departed’s widow, or child.

Despite the morose topic, the song itself is vivacious, with hint of anger?  I’m not sure, but I love it.

*YAWNING OR SNARLING*
Another slow build song.  This is decent, intense, but I find it impenetrable lyrically.  I think that puts me off a bit.  Apparently “the cops went into a crowd” at a Hip show in El Paso for real, but I found no further details on this.  Perhaps there was a photograph of this event, and in it, the assaulted man’s mouth is open.  In the still of a photograph, he could be yawning or snarling…?

*FIRE IN THE HOLE*
The punk track.  This one has a couple lines taken from an old labour movement song of the same name, written by Hazel Jones.  Research also reveals that Gord may be yelling about Nazis, new and old.

I dunno, but I like it.

*SO HARD DONE BY*
Depending on the alignment of Jupiter, this could be my favourite Hip song ever.  I probably shouldn’t say because this whole post will just that, repeated.  Anyway, an ominous, springy guitar sound, soft drums with a tabla (I think) join us for this weird scene.

“One day you'll just up and quit
and that'll be it.
Just then the stripper stopped in a coughing fit.
She said, ‘sorry I can't go on with this’”
(…)
“Just then the room became more dimly lit
as the emcee carried on with it:
‘And now that I got you all strangely compelled,
I'm afraid Candy's not feeling well’”

*NAUTICAL DISASTER*
An evocative masterpiece.  Again, Gord mashes two things together to confuse and get you thinking.  Here, we begin with a scene in which a ship has gone down, and her crew is floundering in the water.  The music matches, with a beat that underscores the frantic situation.

“The selection was quick, the crew was picked in order
and those left in the water got kicked off our pantleg
And we headed for home.”

The “pantleg” line gives me chills to this day.  Later in the song, he speaks about the sound of “fingernails scratching at my hull,” those of the unselected mariners who were left in the wake of rescue ships.  It is perfect. Not one word out of place to paint this horror.

The song twists this terrifying scene with a call from a woman.  Suddenly this call, whatever it may be about, doesn’t seem quite so daunting.  Lots of ambiguity that for once I don’t mind.

According to Gord, the song is specifically referencing the sinking of the Bismarck during WWII, and the ship that abandoned people in the water was the Dorsetshire.

*THUGS*
Love the spare introductory beat on this one, which leads into a unique, grinding guitar tone that I don’t think the Hip ever use again.  The bass is doing most of the driving on this one in the first half.  It’s an awesome change-up.  Toward the end you get some playing around with feedback, and I think a bagpipe?

While not exactly on the nose, the chorus “Ruby honey, are you mad at your man?” is a quote from an old bluegrass song.  That song seems to imply that someone is going to kill the man Ruby’s upset with. I think.  I believe the music video made it clearer.

*INEVITABILITY OF DEATH*
The second song written about Gord’s friend of the family.  According to hip museum dot com, this man saw Gord as the son he never had, so the relationship was close.  He also lived with Gord’s family for a time.

This one seems angry that he’s died.  Not that I blame him.  But we have an odd line you wouldn’t expect in an ode.

“We don’t go to hell
Only the memeries of us do”

“And if you go to hell
I’ll still remember you.”

*SCARED*
Our main acoustic cut.  This one’s got some nice imagery.  Seems to call back to Nautical Disaster:
“Defanged destroyer limps into the bay
Down at the beach
it's attracting quite a crowd
As kids wade through blood
out to it to play”

*AN INCH AN HOUR*
This one’s a romp that has yet another of my favourite Hip verses:

“I want a book that'll make me drunk
full of freaks and disenfranchised punks.
No amount of hate, no load of junk
no bag of words, no costume trunk
could make me feel the same way”

*EMERGENCY*
This is the song that made me buy the album long ago.  I think Gord’s voice has a slightly higher pitch that works for me.  Tons of great lines on this one:

“We're sitting in the Baby Bar bereft
at a shadowy table out past the sentences end.”

“We often stop in these conversations,
things we say here stay here forever amen.
When everything seems either funny or lousy,
funny or lousy, that's where it usually ends.
An emergency without end.”

“But your finger starts to wiggle
and landscapes emerge.”

*TITANIC TERRARIUM*
Agh! There’s so much goodness of this album!  It’s a crescendo from start to finish.  This is a slow ditty.

“There's a trace o mint
wafting in from the north,
so we don't fuck with the 401.
It's bigger than us or
larger than we bargained
I guess it's just not done.”

The 401 is a highway that goes though Toronto.  If there’s a 50 car pile up in January, you can bet it’ll be somewhere on the 401.

“His great grandfather worked for Goodyear.
He'd see the blimp on Sundays.
Wonder what the driver knew
about making rubber tires.”

“There's submarines out there under the ice,
avoiding and courting collision.
An accident's sometimes the only way
to worm our way back to bad decisions”

“My great grandfather was a welder.
He helped to build the Titanic.
He didn't certainly think
that is was unsinkable.”

*IMPOSSIBILIUM*
The closer, probably the strongest yet.  We power through to the finish in a spectacular blaze, ever enigmatic, ever impassioned, a love song.  When the last note fades, I always feel as though this album has come and gone too fast.

“'Roses are worth more dried than alive.'
Such a you thing to say.
O how I adore you
when you reinvent a rosy cliché”

“Roses are difficult everywhere
you must promise me you'll stay.
These long stems are freakish if anything,
but we can cut ‘em down for the vase”

[video=youtube;Y209OpPZAO8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y209OpPZAO8[/video]

With all that said, wait patiently while I find the time to bang out the sixth installment.


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## BadHouses (Oct 17, 2019)

mrmustard615 said:


> I like how you did your review. It's a lot more detailed than mine are to be honest.
> 
> Interesting note on Locked in a Trunk of a Car. I was watching a rebroadcast of the 1970 World Series which, for some reason, was from CBC instead of NBC. They kept breaking in for news reports about the October Crisis. At that point, Laporte was still assumed to be alive. Of course I'm cursing at the TV because they broke into Boog Powell hitting a Home Run (yes, I'm an Orioles fan :lol: ).



What an odd coinkidink.

I'm enjoying the expanded format.  Helps me fill the hours at work, lol.


----------



## BadHouses (Oct 17, 2019)

Information comes from the album liner notes, Wikipedia, Google, and special mention goes to hipmuseum dot com. All errata are entirely mine alone. Also, this format’s pale imitation was consciously and unconsciously stolen from mrmustard615 and Trollheart.

A quiet 1996.



That last one was a doozy.  _Trouble_ has some similarity to the previous album, but I find it a more minimal, sleepy set of tracks.  We get a lot of whispering, bass-led grooves, and likely the most drastic loud-to-quiet changes ever.  We also have a couple fun rockers.

There isn’t much in the way of Canadiana and, while I don’t consider that a bad thing in itself, I think in this case the album lags as a result.  The Canadiana, while far from pandering, is pretty core to the interesting lyrical topics; Without it, we’re left with songs that feel disconnected and are extremely obscure.  Again, I’d bring up the word obtuse.  Fuckin’ poets, man.

Despite that, I believe this was the first Hip album to receive a major award: 1997 Juno Award for Best Album of the Year.

*TRACK LIST*

*GIFT SHOP*
Excellent opener here.  Huge swelling intro.  Apparently it was written about the Grand Canyon which has this aura, attracting people through the ages despite its dangerous size.

While I never found any other reference, I’ve always felt the first verse was another WWI piece.

“The beautiful lull, the dangerous tug
We get to feel small, from high up above
And after a glimpse, over the top
The rest of the world, becomes a giftshop”

“Over the top” was a ubiquitous term to soldiers then – Meaning over the lip of the trench.  If you were going over the top, you were about to attack the enemy.  A phrase of terror.  War on the scale of the Great War certainly dwarfs any man.  And finally, the last bit always felt like yet another piece of poetic perfection from Gord.  Once you’ve bashed a man in the head with your shovel, survived the march through No-Man’s Land, huddled in a trench during an artillery bombardment (between which you would have a relieving “lull”)… What is the rest of your life but a mere trifle?

And still more, we get the lines:

“The pendulum swings
For the horse like a man”
(…)
“We're forced to bed, but we're free to dream
All us human extras, all us herded beings”

It all feels very military to me.

*SPRINGTIME IN VIENNA*
I find the cymbals in this track overwhelming, and they become this ringing mess that annoys me.  I don’t usually skip, but I do turn it down.  A few of the tracks sound that way, but this one is the worst.

*AHEAD BY A CENTURY*
It wouldn’t surprise me that anyone reading this who doesn’t know the Hip DOES know this song.  It’s acoustic perfection.  Gorgeous simplicity with a hook that gets quoted all over the place.

“This is our life
No dress rehearsal.”

It’s wonderful.  It feels like it belongs on a different album, though.

*DON’T WAKE DADDY*
Good song, but flies under the radar.  Each time I hear it, I think it’s lovely, but it would never occur to me for a greatest hits list.

Most interesting thing about is it name-drops Kurt Cobain.  Nirvana opened for the Hip in the early nineties to a dinky crowd in a bar.  Gord went to introduce himself, but unfortunately Kurt was passed out on a pool table.  Hipmuseum dot com posits that imagining “Kurt Cobain reincarnated” as a sled dog was a hopeful wish that he might find a peaceful existence, if not in this life, then the next.  I quite like that.

*FLAMENCO*
I don’t really like this one.  It feels lazy.  I don’t think it is genuinely, but the way Gord sings and the very lackadaisical tempo.  No thanks.

*700 FT CEILING*
Fun, fun, fun.  This thing just jumps into being and tumbles to the end in such an enjoyable way, I can’t help but love it.  The song is about a public hockey rink at night.  The lights create a weird illusion of a ceiling, but I don’t think I’ve seen that myself.  Our hockey rink was just a pond and, if the guy who lived next to the pond felt like erecting it, a single industrial lamp.

*BUTTS WIGGLIN*
Might be my favourite from this album.  Very moody and a very light take on the drug approval process?  This is weird, and I like weird.

“The sweet sound of patent approval comin' down in a not quite fog
The sweet sound of patent approval comin' down in powdery sparks
The sweet sound of patent approval comin' down with holiday concern
The sweet sound of patent approval comin' down in a world of hurt

In my opinion the drug is ready”

*APARTMENT SONG*
Meh.  Similar opinion to Flamenco.

*COCONUT CREAM*
My description of “700 ft Ceiling“ sums this one up well too.  Loads of fun.  It reminds me of a TV show called Royal Canadian Air Farce that had a segment called the chicken cannon.
Wow. It’s been a long time since I heard a Jean Chretien impression.

*LET’S STAY ENGAGED*
Nice slow jam.  Again, the lyrics aren’t really doing anything for me, but it’s performed so well and make your head move, and toes tap.

*SHERPA*
I like this one a little more than Apartment Song and Flamenco, but only by a bit.

*PUT IT OFF*
Fantastic closer that sums up the quiet tone of this album.  This is the song I think of when this album comes to mind.

[video=youtube;2DaSrZKzCgE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DaSrZKzCgE[/video]

With all that said, wait patiently while I find the time to bang out the seventh installment.


----------



## BadHouses (Oct 17, 2019)

Information comes from the album liner notes, Wikipedia, Google, and special mention goes to hipmuseum dot com. All errata are entirely mine alone. Also, this format’s pale imitation was consciously and unconsciously stolen from mrmustard615 and Trollheart.

In 1997, we get a better bootleg.




I’ve never been a fan of live music.  I’ve attended a handful of concerts, including Neil Young in an arena in Ottawa around 2008 (He played the Beatles “A Day in the Life” for an encore, which was cool), I saw a bunch of alt-rock bands (Including Daughtry, the Trews, Thornley, Sloan, Finger Eleven – Most of them jammed together by the end.) at an outdoor festival, I’ve seen some live country, and Thrice in a nightclub venue.

Never really cared for any of it.  Arena concerts in particular sound echo-y and blown out and the smell of pot hangs around to choke you.

So in a way, I don’t regret never seeing the Tragically Hip live.  I’ve never felt the desire to see them, nor felt a pang of regret if they passed through town.  But, as with Neil Young playing the best Beatles song, you do get some interesting and often unique experiences with a live performance.

The Hip were well-known for playing great shows, and the mainstay was Gord.  In writing around the net, Gord is described as a troubadour.  Seeing him in live footage, I can totally see it.  He’s Canada’s Lizard King.  On top of all the stage antics, Gord is also well-known for changing the words and the delivery, injecting rants or snippets of poetry, or even reciting lyrics from other songs during the set.

For years, bootleg recordings were passed around and their value or mystique was often tied up in these rants.  In my research, multiple writers recounted how radio stations playing bootlegs late at night introduced them to the poetic world of the Hip, especially “The Killer Whale Tank”.

Lots of songs that featured on the albums discussed began as lyrical experiments and were incubated in long jam sessions live on stage.  That’s pretty damn cool.  I have a collection released in 2005, and there’s some verse nuggets from the DVD the later appeared on 2006’s _World Container_.  It felt like being in the club.

I love the performances on _Live Between Us_.  This show is electric, Gord is mesmerizing, and the songs are clearly for a high-energy, bombastic experience.  On the _Trouble for the Henhouse_ I mentioned I wasn’t crazy about “Springtime in Vienna,” but here it is fantastic.

One of the best bits is on “Blow at High Dough,” Gord sings some John Lennon but adds and inverts it:

“"I didn't even get my feet wet/I didn't paddle an inch/I've never fought for a thing/I've never fought for anything/I was raised on TV/Like so many of you I see around me. Nothing to kill or die for / No religion, too.”

In "Courage," we get a taste of an unreleased track written about the 1989 Ecole Polytechnique Massacre in which 14 women were killed.  It can only be heard in full on bootlegs and it depicts, I believe,  a mother deciding what her slain daughter should wear to her funeral.

“The snow is so merciless
Poor old Montreal
In spite of everything that's happened
Yeah, in spite of it all
Don't you worry
Her mama's gonna make her look good”

I’m pretty sure every track has something odd to offer.

Back in the introductory post I mentioned Davis Manning, a former member who was in the band from '84 to '86.  When the band was going on tour, he had to decide if he wanted to sacrifice his relationship with his band, or with his girlfriend.  He chose his girlfriend and apparently spray painted the message "The Hip live between us" in an alley.  A photograph of the artwork appears on the disc, though the original was painted over in the 2000s.

TRACK LIST
1. Grace, Too
2.    Fully Completely
3.    Springtime in Vienna
4.    Twist My Arm
5.    Gift Shop
6.    Ahead by a Century
7.    The Luxury
8.    Courage
9.    New Orleans Is Sinking
10.    Don't Wake Daddy
11.    Scared
12.    Blow at High Dough
13.    Nautical Disaster
14.    The Wherewithal



With all that said, wait patiently while I find the time to bang out the eighth installment.


----------



## BadHouses (Oct 18, 2019)

Information comes from the album liner notes, Wikipedia, Google, and special mention goes to hipmuseum dot com. All errata are entirely mine alone. Also, this format’s pale imitation was consciously and unconsciously stolen from mrmustard615 and Trollheart.

1998: Ice storm & Sunshine



This album is a shiny spot in the discography. When I think of this one, I recall the sweet and joyous sounds permeating it. Even the slower and more somber sections are uplifting, filled with wistfulness, as opposed to melancholy. Topics here range from penguins who mate for life, pretentious poets, small town shenanigans, environmentalism, young love, and being in a small band trying to break big.

_Trouble at the Henhouse_ was the first album to have a cardboard packaging. I hate it.  It was immediately squashed.  Most I've come across over the years disappoints me, typically by getting dog-eared and limp.  _Phantom Power_ is probably the only CD that has great cardboard packaging!  Although they have a plastic insert for the CD.  But still, it's excellent and has held up well during the years of listening and moving boxes.  The album won an award for visual art, which seems well-earned, although the liner notes are nigh unreadable, being black on grey background with line-drawings and images.

I'm no sound engineer, but I find this album to be mixed superbly.  Everything feels like its in its right place.  Nothing overwhelms, nothing stands out when it shouldn't.  It feels crisp.  This seems apropos given all that I will say about the tracks down below.  This album has no "patience, tolerance, or restraint."

*POETS
*Yet again, a wonderful opener.  When you hear this song, you know you're in for a pleasant ride.  You're gonna hop in your car and cruise out of town, get ice cream, and watch the sunset.

One of the best bits ever on this track:
"He's been getting reprieve from the heat in the frozen food section, yeah
Don't tell me what the poets are doing
Don't tell me that they're talkin' tough
Don't tell me that they're antisocial
Somehow not antisocial enough"
(...)
"Don't tell me how the universe is altered
When you find out that he gets paid, awright"

This track has such a lounging beat to it, and as usual the guitar weaves in an out of focus, unassuming but far from simple.  The video depicts a band practicing in a living room, but the lights keep getting turned on, ruining their "venue" lighting :grin:. The band is called the Rodents, the name of the proto-Hip band from 1984 consisting of Sinclair and Baker.

*SOMETHING ON*
This one just makes my heart sing. Every note of it is made of positivity. 

"Outside there's hectic action
The ice is covering the trees
And one of 'ems interconnecting
With my Chevrolet Caprice"

The band was trapped in the studio because of the 1998 ice storm.

*SAVE THE PLANET
*The cadence of Gord's singing on the verses in this one hits my ear in just the right way.  In fact, this whole album is essentially Gord nailing his singing. I envision them recording these tracks, wind and snow ravaging outdoors, and them belting away with the biggest grins they've ever had in their lives.

*BOBCAYGEON*
Gord takes us to a small Ontario town for a pretty little love song that would become quite possibly their most recognizable tune.

"I left your house this morning about a quarter after nine
Coulda been the Willie Nelson coulda been the wine
When I left your house this morning
It was a little after nine
It was in Bobcaygeon I saw the constellations
Reveal themselves one star at a time"

*THOMPSON GIRL
*If I use the word lovely a thousand times in this post, you can't blame me.  This song oozes loveliness, has a lovely girl, depicts a lovely scene in lovely Northern Canada.  Gord just keeps on giving.  He compares winter to a siege.  Fuck, I love that!  In this, and the next, song he references springtime, newness, greenness, refreshingness, optimism.

"Thompson Girl, walking from Churchill
Across the icy world with polar bears, it's mostly uphill.
But when she saw that nickel stack
She whistled hard and I whistled back, Thompson Girl"

"She says springtime's coming
Wait til you see
It poking through with them shoots of beauty
It's the end of rent-a-movie weather
It's time we end this siege together
Thompson Girl"

Thompson, Manitoba, is a town that was created after surveyors discovered nickel.  I knew a guy who lived there once.

*MEMBERSHIP*
This is tied for absolute favourite Hip song. I love the straight forward river analogy, I love the evocative lyrics that are powerful and succinct.  In particular, I'm obsessed with the lines:

"Bring on the butterscotch river over-spilling its banks"

With just one word he conjures images that we've all seen of flooding. In particular, it reminds me of the periodic flooding of the Red River in Manitoba. It brings it to mind so perfectly, so clearly, and so expertly, I marvel at the line every time I hear it.

*FIREWORKS*
In 2017, Canada celebrated her 150th birthday. We spent that night watching fireworks off the balcony of a friend's apartment, rums and beers in hand. I put this on, and the whole cramped apartment filled with singing voices.

I'm no patriot, but in that few minutes where we belted "fireworks, emulating heaven til there are no stars anymore," I felt a profound and overwhelming sense pride, happiness, and privilege and being part of a place so God damned awesome.

*VAPOUR TRAILS*
This one reminds me of Trouble at the Henhouse, centered around a domineering bass line, but the chorus brings everything back with explosions, and a line I adore the line:

"There's nothin' uglier than a man hittin' his stride!"

I always forget how much I enjoy this one. Each time I spin this album, I'm pleasantly rocked.

*THE RULES*
A slow little thing.  Kinda forgettable, and not in a good way, and breaks into the momentum terribly.  It makes me want to rewind to the last track, or skip.  I like the bit about the sales pitch:

"Salesman says this vacuum's guaranteed
It could suck and ancient virus from the sea
It could put the dog out of a job
Could make traffic stop so little thoughts can safely get across"

*CHAGRIN FALLS*
Weakest track. It feels aimless and cobbled together. I skip it regularly.  The verses don't sound so bad, I like the rhythm he hits, but the chorus annoys me.  Not terrible but... Meh.

*ESCAPE IS AT HAND FOR THE TRAVELLIN' MAN*
Here the wistfulness hits its peak, with a song about bands' paths criss-crossing, making friends before a set only to never be seen again by the next day.  The title is the name of one of the bands. There are a few named bands and songs here, and they're all as weird. I like it.  Accompanying the lyrics is a very sedate sound.

"We were fifth and sixth on the bill
We talk a little about our bands
Talk a little of our future plans
Not like we were the best of friends
Times they are a heartbeat."

They meet, connect, plan to meet up again at their hotel , but it falls through cuz "they checked our a  hour ago."

*EMPEROR PENGUIN
*Good tune, though not one I find very memorable.  It's still a decent closer, leading us out with a softer sound, as though we've had a long, full day and are prepping for a well-deserved rest.  Some sage advice on this one:

"Don't wipe your asses with your sleeves"

And also a statement of fact:

"Your voice is all detached on a radio wave breeze
We have another caller with a bachelor degree
Talkin' alien invasion is the only chance for unity
Well sorry to interrupt you caller
But that's a physical impossibility
That's a physical impossibility
That's a physical impossibility"




With all that said, wait patiently while I find the time to bang out the ninth installment.


----------



## BadHouses (Oct 20, 2019)

Information comes from the album liner notes, Wikipedia, Google, and special mention goes to hipmuseum dot com. All errata are entirely mine alone. Also, this format’s pale imitation was consciously and unconsciously stolen from mrmustard615 and Trollheart.

2000 out of 10.



As the opening title track comes to a close, you might think _Music @ Work_ is simply _Phantom Power_ 2.0.  The opening lines of this banger should probably give you a clue, however:

“Everything is bleak.  It’s the middle of the night.
You’re all alone and the dummies might be right.”

What we get from then on is an atomic left turn, a twisting, surreal, varied exploration of sound.  We’ve got lots of additional instruments: a sprinkling of studio vocalists who bring a new accompaniment to Gord, synthesizers, keyboard, cello, and tabla.  Originally, the album was supposed to be recorded in a train, though those plans fell through.  They touch on this disappointment in “Train Overnight.”

Lyrically, we take a trip through a series of situations and references that are on par with the strangeness.  Baseball preachers, plane crashes, and remembering cholera.  This album has huge, mountainous songs with a few quiet valleys in between.  Tracks here are some of the most powerful that sweep you forward.  Nearly every track here make me close my eyes and relish each second.

*TRACK LIST
MY MUSIC AT WORK
*The opener sets a scene of radio-listening cubicle drudgery to soaring guitar.  We also get some “carpe diem” type messages here that have permeated the past albums as well, seemingly in advice to avoid the preceding painting.

“On a star beyond the chart or the dark side of a drop of rain.
Determining where you are, in a sink full of Ganges, I remain.”

You what?

“The rain came down berserk.”

*TIGER THE LION*
Here we get the creepy synth sounds, like some kind of robotic horn.  This particular song has two main sources: The first is fighter pilot language from WWII, and the second are paraphrased lectures by a philosopher called John Cage.  Once the intro is over, we have a loping beat with a wall of sound, a feature that will recur.
The opening line is supposed to be a radio transmission, though the code names and message are… florid?

“This is Tiger the Lion, gimme the Knuckles of Frisco.
If there’s danger in the language gentlemen,
I suggest no further use of the two-way radio.”

One of John Cage’s beliefs is summarised by Gord:

“John Cage had come to feel that art in our time
was far less important than our daily lives”

As in the previous track, there’s an underlying positive message regarding the seizing of one’s day and of making one’s fortune.

*LAKE FEVER*
A masterpiece still heard on the radio, “Lake Fever” is a softer cut.  The scene is two young lovers at the edge of a river.  The boy is trying to find a way to make a move, the girl is waiting for him to do so, and in a nervous turn of events the boy begins babbling about a cholera outbreak that took place on this very river.  The girl, to her credit, isn’t put off, but merely speaks softly that he should get on with it.

The boy is a little baffled by the intricacy and the unspoken aspects of seduction:

“I'll tell you a story about the lake fever or
we can skip to the coital fury.
You didn't say yes or no, neither.
You whispered, hurry.”

Coital fury is the best description of sex I’ve ever heard.  It conjures a frenetic, inexperienced energy that I think aptly sums the undocumented outcome of this story.  The close of this song is this lovely sexual analogy.  The vocals run through a series of parallel lines that build and build in volume until they break, explosively in one final standalone verse, after which we get a decelerating outro (Backing vocals in parenthesis):

“Want to be a nobody without peer.  (Hurry)
Want to be a thought that's never done (Hurry)
Want to shake your faith in human nature (Hurry)
Want to break the hearts of everyone.
Want to be your wheezing screen door. (Wanna be)
Want to be your stars of Algonquin. (Wanna be)
Want to be your roaring floorboard. (Wanna be)
Want to break the hearts of everyone. (Wanna break)

And cause discontent until They,
ceasing their investigation,
bring back the days events, (Ah-ah)
good citizens and time well spent, (Ah-ah)
til we're talking in whispers again. (You whispered hurry)
Until we're talking in whispers again. (You whispered hurry)”

*PUTTING DOWN*
We pick up the pace a little for a cute little track.  So much of this album rides on Gord’s delivery.  Words seem to flow and cascade from his mouth in expertly crafted beats.

“United State of ricochet
From the boardwalk to the Appian way
The diamond files, the corporate raves
You'd practically kill not to be afraid
And I'm starting to choke on the things I say.”

On the Fully & Completely podcast, the hosts make the argument that this is a little political jab at the US.  Given the American attitudes towards guns, corporations, and fear – And considering this album came out one year after Columbine, I found it a compelling case of Gord suggesting the “chickens have come home to roost,” as they put it. (Listen)

*STAY*
One of those songs that I think I don’t like, but it turns out I do.  The first verse is the part I remember most, with Gord dropping into a rare lower vocal sound which I find very enjoyable.  The instrumentation is stripped back here, very sparse with the occasional surge during the choruses where a couple more layers are added.

Dunno what this one is about. Even hipmuseum dot com doesn’t have a reference page.

*THE BASTARD*
Fabulous tabla work as this track opens and we pick up the pace.  As the guitars drop in, we develop this surging, chaotic sound.  Love this one, and we get some excellent lines:

“And all of this augers well,
even though it's presaging pell-mell.”

“As the sun groomed the plane with crepuscular rays.
When I saw you”

“Billy Sunday” is name-dropped here.  The Hip always have the best references, and they usually make you hit the books (Or Google) to find out what the hell they’re talking about.  Billy Sunday was a womanizing, hard-drinking baseball player from the late 1800s who suddenly found Jesus and became a travelling preacher.  Despite being offered huge sums of money to go back to playing, he refused them, apparently out of devotion to his faith work.  Sunday was known for putting on these wild performances with crazy gesticulations and bodily movement.  I’m sure the comparison to Gord’s on-stage mania was not lost on the boys. (Video) (Video/Audio)


*THE COMPLETISTS*
I hate the intro to this song, but once the singing begins, I find my distaste ebb, and once the band kicks, suddenly I love it.  Well done, guys.  I don’t know what this one’s about, exactly, but the female vocalist they brought in for a few lines is really great and pleasantly surprising.
This track is quick, peppy, and enjoyable.  Solid.

*FREAK TURBULENCE*
The first in a trifecta of meh.  I’m up and down on this one.  It might be the fastest song here, and it’s got some great lines, although sometimes they have this stream-of-conversation stylings that aren’t that nice.  The lines detailing the airplane’s distress are fun.

“Satan backhands our nose and our chin
The wings tell the tailfin
‘It’s freak turbulence’”

If this song were longer, I might skip it sometimes.

*SHARKS*
Another so-so.  I wouldn’t call it a dud, especially since the central portion is great.  Once all the instruments kick in to produce that wall of music, it picks up and the delivery of the lyrics sell me.  The words themselves do much for me though, drifting into inscrutableness.  Lotta that here.

*TORONTO #4*
An ode to Gord’s grandmother that has some odd metaphor choices.  As noted by both Fully & Completely and hipmuseum dot com, Gord compares his grandmother to the “rock plug” of Mt. Vesuvius.  The rock plug being, of course, the cap on the conduit which causes a build up of pressure and results in a volcanic eruption that is violence and destructive.
This once is sweet.  That’s all I can really say. I don’t like listening to it.

*WILD MOUNTAIN HONEY*
When I see this song come on my iPod in the car, I turn it up loud.  The intro is this eerie, light acoustic guitar.  Little does my passenger know that thirty second in, they’re going get a boot to the face from Johnny Fay’s drums.  I adore this track.  Gord’s word tumble out of his mouth, the drums fall from high to low, the guitars follow suit.  The concept of a mountain is all over the composition.
“Diplomacy goes even better with drinks”

“OK, we agree to disagree.
Giving up.... Giving Up the Embassy
is a whole lot better than
The Embassy's Surrendering.”

“…the confetti cannon blows with litigious force.”

*TRAIN OVERNIGHT*
The defining “wall of sound” track on the album.  This thing is as huge and unstoppable as the train its referencing.  As mentioned, the album was originally supposed to be recorded in a train car.  Unfortunately, it turned out the train they were arranging was deemed too old and decrepit to be used by its owner, and so they were forced back to a conventional studio.  On the bright side, we get this gorgeous piece lamenting that loss, but also loaded with mysterious lyrics.  I don’t even care about their elusive meaning.

“Outside the train overnight,
bloodlines wheel-burnished in moonlight.
A great candescent white skeleton of flight.”

*THE BEAR*
A standout and contender for best Hip song ever recorded.  This understated song moves at a decent clip and has stupendous verses front to back.  Gord tells the tale of a wayward bear in Algonquin Park who wanders in the winter out to an island.  When the bear wakes from his hibernation, the ice that carried him over has melted and in a ferocious hunger, he kills and eats some campers.  After this, hunters come to kill him.

Fuck it, here’s the whole thing:
“I was first attracted by your scent
Your heart must be a caramelized onion
By the time I saw your flame
it was all over for you and whashisname.

I think it was Algonquin Park
It was so cold and winter-dark
A promised hibernation high
took me across the great black plate of ice.

Now I'm the Islander.
I found a place to call my den
and dreamt of the Ferry and
the Enormous Man
Huge as were his children
following around after him

I'm the Islander
woke up in the furtive Spring
more capable of anything

I waited for more men to come (I waited for more men to come)
They docked their boats and cocked their guns (They docked their boats and cocked their guns)
The time for truth and reconciliation's gone (The time for truth and reconciliation's gone)
But with my belly full I intended to get (But with my belly full I intended to get)
Something done (Something done)

I'm the Islander"
woke up in the dead of spring
more hungry than anything
Islander”

Apparently the line “with my belly full I intended to get something done” is borrowed from the movie “Alive,” which recounts the true tale of a plane crash in the Andes in which the surviving passengers cannibalised the corpses of the unlucky.

*AS I WIND DOWN THE PINES*
Gord kinda sounds bad on this track – However, it works.  It’s just him in this dreamlike acoustic bit that fades out the album.  Someone on YouTube put this track to a video of a canoe drifting along a river with jack pines sliding along the shore.  Frickin’ bang on.

[video=youtube;Zcm8-0iVk1I]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zcm8-0iVk1I[/video]



With all that said, wait patiently while I find the time to bang out the tenth installment.


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## Trollheart (Oct 20, 2019)

Now that I'm back, just wanted to drop in and say thanks for flying the flag for journals by other than myself or Musty. It's nice to see someone else put in the effort, and though this band doesn't sadly interest me, you do a very good job of putting them across, and I'm sure it's damn interesting for those who are into them. So thanks again and keep them coming! 
:champagne:


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## BadHouses (Oct 22, 2019)

Your kind words are much appreciated. This has been a fun exercise so far, though I'm gonna have to work on my vocabulary or my review "angle" - I feel very repetitive.

If you don't mind my asking, you guys keep referring (not in this thread, but elsewhere) to the "other music forum" - what the heck is it? You and mrmustard don't seem to have a glowing opinion of the place.


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## Deleted member 56686 (Oct 22, 2019)

Let's just say the maturity level at "That other place" isn't very high. It's called music banter and they seem to emphasize the banter over the music. To be honest, I think Troll and I are having much more success here with our musical pieces here than we ever did over there. Troll was very prolific over there and hardly anybody cared- and it was a music forum for Ozzy Osbourne's sake!


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## BadHouses (Oct 24, 2019)

Information comes from the album liner notes, Wikipedia, Google, and special mention goes to hipmuseum dot com. All errata are entirely mine alone. Also, this format’s pale imitation was consciously and unconsciously stolen from mrmustard615 and Trollheart.

In 2002 I was in Grade 7 I think?



The boys pack up and head to the Bahamas’ Compass Point Studios to record.  After the grueling recording sessions of the last two albums which were edited in a very fussy, intricate way with lots of tracks and tweaks, they wanted something more vacation-y.

This time The Hip switch out producers again, opting this time for prolific Hugh Padgham who has produced such acts as Phil Collins, the Police, the Human League, XTC and is the inventor of the “gated reverb” drum sound, according to la wik.

I vaguely remember the release of _In Violet Light_, mainly lots of airplay for the single “It’s a Good Life if You Don’t Weaken.”

“This outing is solid, but I wouldn’t call it stellar.” That’s what I wrote on the first go-round, but in the intervening days since I started researching, reading into the lyrics, and listening again, I have had to re-write this section.  Despite my natural inclination to do so with the other albums, it would seem I never gave a good long look into the tracks here.  Shame on me! I’m really glad I gave this one the deep treatment, way beyond even what comes through in this little review.

I’d also like to mention that between this and the last album, Gord Downie released his incredible solo album _Coke Machine Glow_ in 2001.  I’m not going to get into it, but if you’re looking to spin a record you’ve almost certainly never heard before, this is a great one to choose.  Gord’s poetry is more central than anything in the Hip, naturally, and musically it is a complete change-up.  More of a coffee shop vibe, I guess?  Fave tracks are Chancellor and The Never-Ending Present.

*TRACK LIST*
*ARE YOU READY?*
As expected, a solid start with an explosive first note.  I put this on my stereo and forgot I had the volume cranked.  Scared the scheiße out of me.

Though I mentioned in the intro I had rewritten some of this review after considering the tracks, I can see why I might have gained the impression I had of the album so long ago.  The opening line is an interesting one though, as it appears this blooming rock song about love has some deathly imagery.

“Hear the ol' whistle blowin'
they're pulling the plug
we got to get goin'
they got our hole dug
are you ready? are you ready, are you ready to love?”

The rest of the poetry is less interesting to my ear.

*USE IT UP*
Good song that seems to revel in the enjoyment of music.  It starts with a laziness that gives way to an exalting loudness as the chorus comes around.  It feels like talking about a favourite album.  As you introduce it you find your excitement growing exponentially as you can’t wait to preach and reveal a secret knowledge to someone new.

We get direct reference to both Randy Newman and Springsteen.

“Use it up, use it all up
Don't save a thing for later
If there's music out there laying in wait
To pounce and drain every ounce if you
wait or hesitate”

Gord’s got an interesting delivery for these verses, with some odd but lovely pauses and held notes, however the word “Away” is almost always somewhat annoying.

*THIE DARKEST ONE*
Excellent track.  Gord is powerful and the band woven behind him make this a gem.  The song has an interesting structure:  The first verse beckons you, and the second verse describes the place you’re welcomed to.  That structure repeats later as well.  And in this place outside of the rigors of life is a place where you can speak and think as you wish “without shame.”  But Gord does not describe a place where you can think your secret racist thoughts, or expound to nobody your communist ideology, or any of the other trillions of thoughts in people’s heads that might be anathema – What Gord describes is more basic than that, more universal a need to feel unshackled:

“Come in, come in, come in, come in
From under these darling skies come in
It's warm and it's safe here and almost harkening
Off to a time and place now lost in our imagination

Where you don't complain-but you still do
and you don't explain-but you still want to explain
Where you believe what you say without shame, 'I just do'
To say what you mean you don't mean what you say
-or you do”
(…)
Come in, come in, come in, come in
From thin and wicked prairie winds, come in
It's warm and it's safe here and almost heartening
Here in a time and place not lost in our imagination

Where you don't explain-but you still do
And you can complain-if you want to complain (To complain)
Where you're real instrumental or supple 
Or sexy as hell
Where you say ‘I believe’" or say without shame
'I can't tell'

The video for this track features Don Cherry and the Trailer Park Boys.

*IT’S A GOOD LIFE IF YOU DON’T WEAKEN*
This one’s a masterwork and almost the pick of the litter.  A contemplative piece with minimal instrumentation gives Gord a chance to just perform.  His voice is haunting, quavering, ethereal.  On a couple occasions he lulled me to sleep over the radio with a cadence and rhythm that is innately pleasing.

“Let’s get friendship right
Get life day-to-day
In the forget-yer-skates dream (Forget-yer-skates dream)
Full of countervailing woes (Full of countervailing woes)
In diverse-as-ever scenes (In diverse-as-ever scenes)
Proceeding on a need-to-know (Proceeding on a need-to-know)
In a face so full of meaning
As to almost make it glow (Almost make it glow)"

Once again, the imagery of death is interspersed.

Apparently, this piece was written way back in the 80s.  Curious to think this was simmering just beneath the surface of the raucous bar band.

*SILVER JET*
A wicked rock song.  Intro’d with some harsh metallic guitar tone.

“It’s quiet again
When a car like Big Ben
Radio dopplerin’
‘For all you Gregory Peck fans
Let us now praise famous men
To take some pressure off the wondrous
To fight”
(…)
“and your heart jumps too
As if the wolves of Northumberland 
Were rumored to be en route”

The Fully & Completely podcast makes a good point with this track.  In 2002, the imagery of an airplane might have been especially stark in the wake of 9/11 having just shaken North America.  Lots of fear imagery here as well.  Jumping hearts, legendary Wolves, “a heightened air of peril,” “a still in the night.”  Several colours are mentioned and implied here as well, mainly grey, violet, and green, which are a combination inspiring unease to my mind.  The song also references the cover art and title with “There’s a heron outside / Inviolate light.”

*THROWING OFF GLASS*
The imagery of this song is very suburban and well-written, but musically I find this a little unnecessary.  However, it has taken on a new meaning since I’ve learned it is about Gord’s daughter.  The childlike speech, the repetition, the urban setting makes a lot more sense:

“’Why is the world so creepy?’ she asked
After a car full of haircuts drove past
A backseat full of 'the boys'”

“And just like after she heard
the word 'iridescent'
and everything was iridescent for awhile,
It wasn't long
before she exalted out of nowhere,
'Isn't this exquisite?'”

The title isn’t mentioned except for the end, in which we return to the image of the boys driving past.  They were described as “cads” in another verse as well.  The meaning of breaking glass isn’t expounded, but when I think of young boys in a car, I think of them tossing beer bottles out to watch them smash spectacularly.  But I also wonder if they’ve maybe witnessed a car accident, though maybe a minor one.  I can remember a scene exactly like this as a child riding in my parents van; It was a crappy Chevy Cavalier weaving through traffic, blasting contemporary music sung-to, and side-swiping a car in an ill-fated attempt to thread the needle.  Nobody hurt, but I can still see it quite vividly.  No broken glass though.

*ALL TORE UP*
This track sounds autobiographical.  A bar band romp about a bar band romping.  The scenes Gord paints are of a band’s explosion into the mainstream stemming from just playing sets for fun.

“We were a blow-out of wicked proportions
An accidental company
If we said, 'We're gonna go out
and get all tore-up tonight
then we did
we got a little happenin'”

“With Dottie, the bluegrass singer
baring her local breast
singing, ‘You want an open concept!?
-I'll give ya open concepts!’”

“Ya play yer Fuck-Off-Nows right
and don't clear the place
Wreak some havoc on the way out
You might make it”

We also get a little interstitial quote that makes it plain:

“Drink up folks.  It’s getting on time to close.”

*LEAVE*
I could not for the life of me remember how this one went.  I should’ve – It’s incredible!  We get Gord’s low voice which is always a treat when he busts it out.  The track begins with a watery, acoustic-y sound and Gord suddenly emerges – The volume, the intensity, the instrumental layering builds ever skyward, as though he were going to the moon.

This song has one of my favourite Gord lines.  A picture is apparently worth a thousand words, but an expert like Gord can craft a picture from a single sentence:

“Watching a dog charge a flock
of birds exploding in congregation”

Birds are the central subject of the song.  It begins with a more pedestrian view of the dog above and the birds discussing this dog’s attacks amongst themselves.  As the song builds there’s an expanding view of a bird’s life and the possibilities presented by flight.  I like how after the first chorus, the song doesn’t return to its previous sound, it just keeps going louder.  Death imagery returns at this point:

“It's a routine flight for this bird tonight
There's more worms than earth
in the afterlife
Where the blind feed the blind,
whispering things like;
'On the money' and 'Bullseye'”

We get a thesis statement that comes up on other tracks as well: “Where there's love, there's hope”

“'Well I don't know... but why suppose it's
not the way it should be?
When you can squawk and wait for word from above
and change yourself into something you love
When you
Leave”

This is the best track on the album.  “Leave” is a single-minded composition in which every single aspect serves this greater thematic purpose.  The graph for all aspects of this song is linearly positive.  Every piece is serving the concept of lifting, flying away, and leaving:


Gord’s voice goes from low to high, even falsetto by the end
The instruments are minimal in the beginning, but are added as the song goes on
The song begins with one bird, then expands to a flock and eventually the song seems to be from high in the sky, and then even to “the afterlife.”
The volume goes quiet to loud with only a few blips on the journey
The choruses are not high points, they’re only the highest point thus far.  There is no return to normalcy for the next verse, only greater escalation.
By the end, this song is exalting in all ways
 
This is a “100% song” for me.

*BEAUTIFUL THING*
A song I remember alternately liking and disliking.  Death is in the fore here.  The song kicks off:

“In the ulcerating silence
Perspective comes
The way it always does-for it's random
So randomly somebody calls
The phone rings and it brings Niagara Falls
At 3 o'clock in the morning
'You'd better be dyin'-and you were
-So we talked about time
and where it went,
unremarkable events,
and how one day took two days
and they got spent.
How you'd continue, carefully, in degrees
trying to do one true beautiful thing”

The outro is preceded by a nice guitar solo as well.

*THE DIRE WOLF*
Not too shabby.  This one is inspired by a poem called “Sea Surface Full of Clouds.”  The titular canine is a stand-in for the ocean or perhaps the shoreline which chews up the wayward ships – In either case, a terrifying beast.

There is a whole lot going on in this song.  It's ostensibly about another nautical disaster.  A girl named Ann Harvey, her family (and their Labrador dog) rescued 163 people from a shipwreck near Isle-Aux-Morts (Eng.: Island of the Dead) in Newfoundland Canada.

Interestingly, through that Wiki article, we get a reference to an earlier song.  “Ann was known as the 'Grace Darling of Newfoundland', after the Englishwoman who, with her father, saved seamen wrecked on the *Northumberland* coast.”

I’ve never been to Newfoundland & Labrador, but I have been to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and the maritime feeling is pervasive.  Always and everywhere the sea is this fearsome force that at any moment can giveth and taketh away.  Fishing and boating are part of everything, from the industry, the leisure, and the tourism of those sea-side regions, and its iconography is ubiquitous.  Shipwrecks are commemorated up and down the coasts and you can often find maps which dot and date them through the centuries by the hundreds.  “Newfoundland’s claws” have claimed a great deal of materiel, to say nothing of the countless lives.

I think this song does that kind of required obsession justice.  The reticent and folksy instrumentation complement the maritime feel, particularly with the lines that speak a caution to sailors to never overestimate their chances; plenty have done and paid dearly:

“when better boats been (Ooo)
done by this water (Ooo)
where bigger boats been done by less water (Ooo)
and betting boats been done by this water (Ooo)
when bigger boats been done by less water (Ooo)
and better boats been done by this water”

We also get references to two actors whose lives were turbulent and marked by early death.  Both of them starred in Hitchcock’s _Lifeboat_.  Gord and his movies.

*THE DARK CANUCK*
Movies again, one real, one fictional.  The song takes place at a “drive-in double feature” and the song itself has two distinct halves.  The first is a yelpy, twangy, stream-of-consciousness musing.  The second half follows this super satisfying and sinister time change.

This song is apparently about soldiers.  I don’t really see it, but that’s on me.

[video=youtube;GopGwk-3LWA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GopGwk-3LWA[/video]

*BONUS TRACKS*
I didn’t know these existed until now.  Some CDs came with a Tragically Hip fan club card and a download link to three tracks, but I wouldn’t have internet in my home until around 2007 anyway.  These tracks serve as an omen of the oncoming digital music era, which I find to be a fascinating aspect.

*PROBLEM BEAR*
Peppy little song featuring the word Memphremagog.  Feels like a bonus track, a little oddball, and I like it.  The title right off the bat makes me think of bears which scamper through backyards stealing bird feeders or congregate at garbage dumps.  Mischievous silliness with a little bit of destruction, though be sure not to get close.

Gord talks about people arguing in another room, unseen, and he’s just sitting trying to write a damn song but can’t concentrate with all the racket.

“Shakespeare, you're a drunken savage
Well, you're a sober and green-eyed Voltaire
It almost sounds funny
Like two tough-talking goalies
Who are really going at it upstairs”

*ULTRA MUNDANE*
According to hipmuseum dot com, this song is a play on the term Ultramontanism, a papal notion that the Church ought to be dictating how Catholics worldwide to live and govern.  I suspect an artist like Gord and the Hip would balk at such a proposition, viewing a traditionalism as little more than a repressive, creativity-killing endeavor.  I also suspect there’s a circular thing going on here, where the youth break the tradition to make new ones, only to have their progeny do the same to them.

Musically, I think this song is fine.  Another peppy ditty.

*FOREST EDGE*
An acoustic-y, country tune.  You get full on gang-vocals here rather than the echoed, emphasis-providing backing vocals that are a staple up to now.  Enjoyable!
“Like all great relationships (Like all great relationships)
This one started with an apology (This one started with an apology)”

PHEW. That was a big one, and I had to write and re-write several sections over and over.  I expected to change my mind on some albums but wow, I didn’t expect it to be with which I was so familiar, nor did I expect it to be so drastic.  I think the first two tracks had bits that I wasn't I love with and it soured me on the whole experience.  Again, shame on me.



With all that said, wait patiently while I find the time to bang out the eleventh installment.


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## Trollheart (Oct 25, 2019)

I think the thing about Music Banter has to be put into context. Yes, they can be dicks and often are, and sometimes just for the fun of it. They can and did often seem like a pack of wolves searching for a new sheep to tear apart, or an old one in my case. There were people there who could sense weakness or perhaps just a reluctance to get into confrontations, and who capitalised on that. Like all bullies and gang leaders, their cronies piled in and soon you were fighting on several fronts, usually with no chance of winning. All verbal, obviously, I hasten to add. Other than one guy who apparently threatened another with his Glock... that was after I had left though.

However, there are always two sides to the story and no issue is ever black and white. It would be grossly unfair to say I had no support or appreciation there. On the contrary, I had a great many friends there, and even those I wasn't on good terms with occasionally might grudgingly admit something I had written was good. My writings were in general well received and I think everyone, bar no-one, appreciated the contribution I made to the forum and realised it would not be the same without me (head beginning to swell now) and I see at the moment that appears to be the case. Everyone who would enjoy it got a great kick out of the three years when I set aside a separate month to feature nothing but heavy metal - my Metal Months - and they were on the whole a great success.

The real trouble was when people who had nothing else to do got bored, or decided to pick a fight. It was easy with me - just question my music taste, beliefs or slag off my sister and I was on the warpath. This situation would then be exploited to its fullest and others would join in, eventually leaving me a metaphorical broken and battered corpse on the ground. Never stopped me, but it was hurtful. I don't mean to suggest that I was the only target of such attacks, of course. Some people had it much worse, and more frequently than me. It was kind of like going out into the school yard and meeting the tough guys who would beat you up before the bell for class rang again. 

But to be completely fair to them, when the bad times hit they were there for me. When I was in such a bad depression that I couldn't eat, at all, for three days and almost collapsed and ended up in hospital, they were all  very supportive. When my aunt died and five months later one of my beloved cats had to be put to sleep, they all stood by me and sympathised. Every single one. They're not quite rough diamonds, but they're not unfeeling bastards either, though I did have knock-down rows with some individuals and said things I probably should not have. The thing is, when you know who they are and how they work, things that they might say that could really offend someone else who doesn't know them just washes over you. You learn to fight fire with fire and not to take offence.

I would be frequently and regularly advised to kill myself, but without any real malice. Slurs would be made against my family, but I learned to give as good as I got. When one guy answered the question as to where he had been with "in your mom" I told him I hoped he had not got too tired digging her up, as she has been dead for over a quarter of a century. These are not things I would normally say, but you learned to hit back in the same way as they did. When they saw that the most brutal - but not meant to upset you - things they could say to you did not faze you, they either accepted you or left you alone. The fun, to some extent, of baiting you was gone out of it for them. I guess it could be seen as a sort of test, or hazing; they wanted to see if you had "the right stuff", maybe.

There was definitely good and bad, and days there where I just wanted to leave, as I eventually did. But they were and are still people I consider my friends, and say about them what you will, they almost to a man knew their music, and it was great to talk to and learn from them, even if they did slag off my music taste. One thing you could be assured of with them was lively debate and, of course, banter, though not always about music.


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## Deleted member 56686 (Oct 26, 2019)

There is some truth to that. Many of the relatively few members there (talk about a contradiction of terms) definitely know their music, or at least the genres they're into. Of course if you were a little behind on something like hard bop modal jazz done by country artists or something like that, then you didn't know anything about music and you didn't belong there. Yeah, there were a couple snobs to be sure. I think the big problem is they treat the place as a social site and the music seems to be secondary. Obviously, the music is secondary here too, but it's supposed to be; after all, we are a writing site.

Also, there is absolutely no supervision. The new mod there tries her hardest to make things more civil but she's like on her own island. In other words, there isn't much in the way of support and certainly nothing in the way of protection. When I left here and joined over there, and being former staff here as well, I was shocked at what little the mods did to make MB a more pleasant place. I mean, I couldn't believe it.

But Troll is right when he says there are some really good people over there. One guy in particular is especially civil and is even well- respected. Of course it is mostly guys. How many women are actually over there, maybe four? Anyway, there are a handful of guys there who wouldn't last a day on another forum, and especially on a writing forum like here, There is all kind of baiting and flaming and, for the most part, they get away with it. Even the guy that threatened someone with a gun came back after a week's time out. The other guy got six months earlier for simply losing his temper (something he did often actually, but he also had a target on his back so to speak).

Anyway, it's easier for me to stay away because I don't have the time invested there the way Troll does, or the time I've invested here. Hopefully between the three of us (and hopefully more), we can make All Things Music another place for writers to show their skills or at least be a nice extension of the Lounge where we talk about our favorite artists and what not. Like they say, Rome wasn't built in a day 


(maybe it was a week? I have to check up on that)


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## BadHouses (Oct 27, 2019)

It's too bad the place got like that.  I hope my prying wasn't out of line, and hopefully we can make this place a friendlier hangout!


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## Deleted member 56686 (Oct 28, 2019)

No, not at all. We've been talking about "That other place" for a while so it's natural people would be curious.


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## BadHouses (Oct 28, 2019)

Information comes from the album liner notes, Wikipedia, Google, and special mention goes to hipmuseum dot com. All errata are entirely mine alone. Also, this format’s pale imitation was consciously and unconsciously stolen from mrmustard615 and Trollheart.

2004




_In Between Evolution_ is the first album I ever bought.  The singles were fantastic.  This album sold well but was knocked down soon after release by Avril Lavigne.  Oh well.  I suspect lots of Hip fans had a similar reaction to this album as me.  We get some amazing Hip combined with some of their worst material to date.  Only one song is truly bad, but it was disappointing second half.  With the benefit of a deeper listen, I haven’t budged on my initial take.

*HEAVEN IS A BETTER PLACE*
Nice smooth, loud guitar sound on this one.  I like the way the drums kick in after the first few notes of the guitar.  Johnny Fay really rattles it out on this one and his drums are enjoyably conspicuous here.  I like how abruptly the song ends too.

I’ve seen reviews that rate this as a low point of the album, but I disagree.  It’s rambunctious and it has punk aesthetics, which they’ve toyed with from time to time.  It starts the album in traditional style, loud and fast.  This is one of the punkiest songs, with Gord’s voice having a frenetic quality and he sounds like he’s holding on to the key by his pinkie toes.  Fun! Good! Yes!

The liner notes dediate this song to Dan Snyder, a hockey player I’ve never heard of.  He died in a car crash during recording.  Apparently, he was a model player, a “glue guy,” the one who is keeping up morale and setting a great example both on and off the ice.

The song is not a downer, far from it.  It seems to celebrate this type of guy and his sportsmanlike attitude and laments his loss.

“If and when you get into the endzone
Act like you've been there a thousand times before
Don't blame don't say people lose people all the time anymore”
(…)
“Heaven is a better place today because of this
But the world is just not the same”

*SUMMER’S KILLING US*
A more typical sounding Hip track, with a comfortable beat and weird verses.  You get some country-style guitar here and cymbals out the wazzoo.  Gord’s vocals are less strained here, more passionate, a little yelpy.

The song seems to be complaining about the touring which the band has been doing for 20 years by now.  Here’s this band that has all these songs they want to play and love writing, but they also have to play them over and over and always be entertaining.  I think that’s something bands have always struggled with.  Perhaps complain is the wrong word, Gord does not seem frustrated, merely exhausted from doing a damn good job. There is also a touch of sarcasm I think, expressing a thankfulness that this is the height of their troubles: "Oh woe is me, I have to play music for a living!" And… is that Gord getting cocky in the middle stanza?!

“Come on up here we got something to show ya
Wanna show you everything we know
Wanna show you we can vanish before ya
Wanna show you we got our blind roads”

And does your family know your wishes?
Cause this chorus'll do ya like the dishes

Summer's killing us!
It's just sing sing sing all day
It's as if summer just exists in her praises”

The phrases, “summer exists in her praises” is lost on me.  Gord, in an interview, doesn’t help matters:

"Well, maybe Summer doesn't exist unless we say it does, unless we give it a name."

Sure.  I love the song though.

*GUS: THE POLAR BEAR FROM CENTRAL PARK*
Oh, I love this song.  We have here a simple tale, though one that exemplifies an idea of emasculation, powerlessness, and captivity.  It could very easily be viewed as an analogy for a host of scenarios.  Gus is, indeed, a polar bear who was in the Central Park Zoo.  The bear was lethargic and likely depressed.  Gord summarizes the situation like so:

“When it's either them or it's us anything that moves and
Everything you see is something to kill and eat
What's troubling Gus? Is it nothing goes quiet? (What's troubling Gus)
Is that what's troubling ya Gus the mere mention of the name (Is that what's troubling ya Gus)
Used to be enough to make every bird stop singing? (Used to be enough)
Is that what's troubling ya Gus? No one is afraid enough? (Is that what's troubling ya Gus)”

This fearsome warrior is now a pet, fed by handlers and ogled by the smallest of bipeds.

The song has this gorgeous drone sound to it, and Gord sings similarly.   The repetitive nature of the verses also feeds this sedated, almost boring feeling.  The song itself is not boring; the sounds conjure the idea of boring, to my mind.  As in, the beast has no way of doing what it wants and is thus left to wander its pen, eat, or sleep.

Some sources, including hipmuseum, posit that this song is an analogy for the presidency of George Jr.  The war in Afghanistan is a well-established bog, and the new war in Iraq is not seeing the overwhelming support that the Afghanistan one did after the catalysing effect of 9/11.  As such, George’s popularity and respect dwindles.  It seems stretched, but I’ve seen this interpretation in a couple places.

*VACCINATION SCAR*
Wow this album starts strong.  And it keeps going with this track, which I believe was the first single I heard from this album.  It has a mysterious quality.  We get a twisting guitar falsetto flitting into and out of the mix.

A few sources I’ve looked at state this song is anti-war/Bush Jr.  Downie was vocally anti-war and anti-Bush during their 2003 tour and considering how all-consuming Afghanistan and Iraq were on the news cycle back then, it’s no surprise this topic comes up.  I’m not really convinced though, as the links appear tenuous.  I’ve never had an interpretation of this song.  I just like the way they play and sing.

There does seem to be a thread of inevitability, or entropy, running through the song.

“So, the chemistry's set”
(…)
“It went down like a bad card table
Like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge”
(…)
“Burning down to embers' end”
(…)
“Slowly falling star”
(…)
“We’re rolling, so what?”

Whatever the case, I love this song.  I think this is the song that spurred me to buy the album.

*IT CAN’T BE NASHVILLE EVERY NIGHT*
I was obsessed with this track.  I would proselytize it at every opportunity.  Nobody ever seemed to get into it as much as me, but I tried over and over nonetheless.  I love the opening lines:

“He said, ‘fuck this,’ and ‘fuck that.’
And this guy’s the diplomat.”

This song has Gord’s exact words to back up the anti-Bush themes.  According to him this song was against "Toby Keith's of the world" who bought the Patriot Act politics back then, and who aided in selling the wars to the public.  Gord has a dim view of patriotism, which I think I touched on, and people who were blindly writings songs of American exceptionalism.  The imagery of bromides and blinding continues.

“He said 'we are what we lack'
And this guy's the autodidact
Stares into the glare of them TV lights
It can't be Nashville every night
(…)
“He sang 'I'll die before I quit'
And this guy's the limit
Stares into the queer of the firefight
It can't be Nashville every night”

Once again, this was lost on me at the time.  This is just a rocking good tune.

*IF NEW ORLEANS IS BEAT*
I’m up and down on this one.  Musically, I like the middle, but don’t care for either end.  Gord has this weird singing, and I find the lines kinda dumb:

“Your smile is fading a bit so I ration it
Don't think about it”

The middle is enjoyable.  There’s nothing remarkable, no solo, nothing explosive, nothing evocative.  This is a hipster song – Gord brought some people down to New Orleans because he wanted to show them that it was real and like, genuine man.  But he changed his mind when the low-down, hep place he wanted to show his friends had closed down.

Doesn’t do much for me.  Feels like an outtake.

*YOU’RE EVERYWHERE*
We quicken the pace a bit.  This one is fine.  Another song that’s apparently anti-Bush, though once again I’m not getting it.  There is a quote from Baker saying that at the time of recording, which occurred n the States, they felt like they were in the thick of the media smokescreen – That being the thing that is “everywhere” in the song.  According to hipmuseum dot com, Gord is quoting and subverting some slogans:

“write the Tiger” (“Ride the Tiger” being an old political slogan)
“Be all that you can be” (US Army commercial slogan)

We also get a litany of situations in which the eponymous “you” are there, some 24 hour TV topics, and what I would consider the media prime directive, that being the spinning and maintenance of the democracy tale:

“You are there when I stop writing things down
And when I forget about who I am now.
Forget about who's kissing her who's behind my plow.
Now it's time to drown all of that poetry out.
Somehow, where democracy
Is how we all learn to sleep”
(…)
“There's no escaping this dream
We're dancing with no distractions”

When talking about mass media, people are often urged to “wake up” and cease being sheeple and to resist the TV mind-control.  The original title for the song when it was being workshopped was “Ballroom.”

*AS MAKESHIFT AS WE ARE*
A nice rocker.  Love Fay’s little flourish that kicks the song off.  We get a wall-of-sound guitar tone that reminds me a little of Queens of the Stone Age (Incidentally the new producer, Adam Kasper, produced Songs for the Deaf.)

I have no idea what this track’s about.  The most prominent scene is a basketball game, perhaps a practise or exhibition game:

“You can't take your shots back. I have to watch them miss.
The basketball rim shook like a tambourine.
Not an unlikely event in a game that means nothing”

But then…

“You're a complex dune, I'm a cloud of octopus ink
You're an elusive tune, I'm more ice sculpture than I think
You're the neutral tribe and I got the wrong openness”

I’ll settle for enjoying this one naively.  It’s pleasant on the ears.

*MEAN STREAK*
Acoustic cut with a huge focus on Gord’s voice.  Electrics splice in after the fist chorus and dip into and out of the song in a lovely, pensive way.  This one comes and goes and it’s not a track that sticks in my memory, other than the opening lines.  Even listening to it now closely, I find myself tuning out.  Guess it isn’t for me.  Usually I’m thinking about the next song…

*THE HEART OF THE MELT*
And its no wonder – This is a bad ass song, maybe my top pick of the album.  Once again, we kick off the drums and we get the mean growling guitar.  The song starts combative:

“There’s me, then there’s you
And I could dance with the puck
In a telephone booth
You said, ‘I don’t give a fuck,
Besides enough about you…’”

The whole second half of this two-and-a-half-minute banger has a great noodling guitar solo dancing around in the background.  Amazing outro.  We get this great bridge right at the solo begins:

“And then
Of course
There's the dorsal fin
Closing in that you can't outswim.
‘It's not him that I gotta outswim’ you said,
‘Just you,’ you said,
‘Just you.’

Love this track beginning to end.

*ONE NIGHT IN COPENHAGEN*
A nice song.  The track paints a nice image of a sea-side town, with some people and their problems existing in spite of the quaint and quiet.  Once again, this one doesn’t do a whole lot for me.  The boys sound good, but nothing about this song feels memorable.

*ARE WE FAMILY*
Plucky little acoustic bit.  I think this is the first Hip song I ever hated.  Blech.  There’s a lot going on in the lyrics which seem to equate family squabbles with larger racial and political squabbles.

Musically, this song is big-time boring.

*GOODNIGHT JOSEPHINE*
I’m sad to say the closer doesn’t make amends for the last few duds. It is much better.  It doesn’t feel lost or meandering, nor does it bore me.  At best I’d call it decent.  And the “goodnight, goodnight” outro I actually like.

*BONUS TRACKS*
I can’t find any reference as to where these two bonus tracks (“Night is for Getting” & “Fighter Fighter”) come from and I didn’t know they existed until I found the lyrics on hipmuseum.

*NIGHT IS FOR GETTING*
Couldn’t find a copy!  The title is conspicuously a lyric from “Vaccination Scar,” which is also a recurring live poetic snippet from well before this album dropped.

*FIGHTER FIGHTER*
Found a live performance, presumably from the IBE tour.  Sound quality isn’t great, but it sounds like a fun rocker.  Fay’s drumming on show once again.

It sounds like we’re revisiting classic Hip material, possibly heading back to wartime France.  We get a soldier who is tired of fighting, wants to head home, and is surrounded by unfamiliar languages – Those of the civilians who question his presence, and those of the enemy who don’t need to speak English to communicate “I’m gonna kill you.”
The following verse name-drops the Lord’s Resistance Army (Well before #Kony2012, by the by) and their child soldiers.  This song feels like a typical war movie: War is hell and good people die.  A good, solid message, but not treated differently than we’ve seen before.

I liked it more than Mean Streak, Are We Family, and Goodnight Josephine so maybe it should have made the cut.



With all that said, wait patiently while I find the time to bang out the twelfth installment.


----------



## BadHouses (Oct 28, 2019)

Information comes from the album liner notes, Wikipedia, Google, and special mention goes to hipmuseum dot com. All errata are entirely mine alone. Also, this format’s pale imitation was consciously and unconsciously stolen from mrmustard615 and Trollheart.

2006: The year Bob Rock invaded.



The time has come.  _In Between Evolution_ was great with a heaping helping of disappointment, but it didn’t stop me running out in 2006 to grab the latest offering.  I’d heard the lead single, “In View” and it intrigued me enough to justify the purchase even though it belied a noticeable shift in sound for the band.  I had no idea what was in store.  It was bright, it was bubbly.  After this, I never bought another.

It has been a long time since I listened right through this album.  My impression, which comes from years ago, is that this album was the equivalent of Metallica’s black album.  Bob Rock was brought on for the production this time around, and in the same way he pop-ified Metallica, I felt he had pop-ified the Hip.  And like thrash metal fans, I felt a touch of betrayal.

Even the artwork had this diluted and childish effect.  The exterior was fine, if drab, but the inside looks like a corporate advertisement or a tween’s idea of “cool.”   Hopefully that’s what they were going for.  The most egregious thing was the branding.  That globe logo is all over the liner notes.  It felt tacky, corporate, and low.  They didn't keep it going forward, nor should I have expected it since its an album logo, not a band logo.  But that kind of marketing gimmick imagery didn't impress me.  Oh, and the lyrics to "World Container" are written in that lame "word cloud" style that is trending lately.  Maybe they did it before it was in fashion, but it still looks like garbage.

With all of that said, I am looking forward to revisiting.  With the experience of _In Violet Light_, and my impression of _WC_ likely being antiquated, I anticipate a softening.  After all, Metallica’s black album was great!

*TRACK LIST*
*YER NOT THE OCEAN*
Pop. Poppy pop poppity pop.  This was a shocking opening track to me in 2006.  It was peppy and enjoyable, but something was off.  I enjoyed it then, despite the stylistic reservations, and I enjoy it now.  It’s a decent track and whatever changes were going on the boys are playing with verve.

I was struck by the apparent simplicity of the lyrics – It appears to be a straight-ahead water analogy, though you “You” are isn’t clear to me.  Perhaps its any sort of adversity.  According to hipmuseum, a book is referenced called “A Stranger to Myself,” the post-humous memoir of a poet and soldier fighting the Russians in the Wehrmacht.  Gord does not deign to clarify, neither in the rest of the song, nor apparently in interviews.

Oh well, still a decent opener, though it is marked by a similarity to the last album – It doesn’t feel mysterious or memorable.

*THE LONELY END OF THE RINK*
We open on a weird, distant, echoing sound that I assume is a guitar.  Weird. That’s good!  The band then busts in at speed.  I like how the music breaks for the verses, then comes rushing back in between, it really works for me.  Then, out of the blue, we get an odd interlude – It sounds like classical guitar or mandolin. Whatever, its great.

I think Bob Rock’s influence might be showing itself here – It sounds clean and each instrument feels clear and precise, which is impressive when they’re going all-out together.  Gord is at the forefront here, as well, possibly more than he’s ever been.  His articulation is on display, and its lovely.

This song reminds me of coming home from extracurricular activities, like hockey.  In this case, they’re heading home through a blizzard, beautifully described as “snowy tomb.”

More likely, it’s the tale of two people falling in love via local hockey, with the entanglements of seduction being likened to hockey moves: 

“You drove me home through a snowy tomb
I fell asleep in my seat
I had the dream of having no room
You were there just staring at me

I hear your voice ‘cross a frozen lake
a voice from the end of a leaf
saying, ‘you won’t die of a thousand fakes
or be beaten by the sweetest of dekes’
At the lonely end of the rink, you and me”

I enjoyed it back in 2006, and I enjoy it even more now.

*IN VIEW*
In which the Hip go full pop.  I hesitantly liked it at release, but I find it greatly improved with time.  It’s a fun, loud song with Gord and the band putting a happiness on display I don’t think we’ve seen since _Phantom Power_.  Again, the song is crystal clear.  At this point, let’s just assume the productions is top notch for everything unless otherwise noted.  We get some piano, and I think a glockenspiel?  Maybe its just more piano.  It’s pretty.

The story is a man who wants to call someone, presumably a lover.  Were they a past lover? Current?  Or maybe a lover yet-to-be?  We don’t know, but whatever the case the man focus is unrelenting: “You’re always in view.”

I don’t think I’d call it deeper than the last two tracks, but the most interesting and typically cryptic Gord verse is at the end:

“In the Day Eraser's dark of night
In the Excited States, gone in plain sight
Under the wave or by cavelight
I lose, things change, but never in your eyes”

*FLY*
Another up-beat, rocker slower than to the preceding few.  I don’t feel the need to describe the song as a result of its similarity to those tracks.  The song seems to be about travel on its surface, and perhaps about taking the high road and not getting bogged down by the inconsequential.  That’s a nice sentiment.  I don’t find it explored in an interesting way here.  Freddie Mercury is name dropped.  The only line I really like is:

“Coastline rises like a pair of glowing thighs”

So far, this album is almost barren – Gord’s evocative words, his penchant for odd but startling similes, metaphors, and characterisations is painfully absent.  The songs are enjoyable, but… that’s not enough for a band with a history so rich.

*LOVE (SIC)*
I like the punny title.  This is where the album lost me in 2006.  Apart from a slight eerie feeling during the verses, the song feels generic.  We get some of Gord’s literary interests, finally.  The whole song is apparently built around the works of Northrop Frye, with one phrase quoted in the song:

“Love is the only virtue there is.”

Frye himself stumbled on this idea from the painter William Blake.

I don’t care for the way these verses are constructed.  I’m sure they’re effective in some contexts, but the usage of fragments or single words feels like how I and people I knew write poetry when we first crossed into the double digits:

“There are words I carry in my heart
Words I carry in my heart
Clung to
Glad of
Uncommonly held
Peculiarly held
Peculiarly interlaced
Remembered and felt”

I love the way he sings them, which is the best part of the song.  The bass nice too, real high in the mix so it’s a perpetual undercurrent.  Twangy guitars, and the fuller guitar sound of the choruses, sound washed out and bland.

*THE KIDS DON’T GET IT*
If “Love (sic)” annoyed me, this is the song that made me turn off the stereo upon first listen.  I found this to be the worst thing I’d heard, and faithless me felt the Hip might as well be dead.  I’ll stick with IBE and before, thank you!

In time, I warmed up to it, but going into it for this retrospective, I was not expecting much.  It opens with a cussing guitar and a slow beat.  Gord’s voice here is warbly, tenuous.  I’m liking it a lot more now.  I love his insane “woo!” that pops up now and then.  This song feels insane.  There’s a plonking guitar that sounds like its leaking notes at random throughout the whole thing.  As the chorus builds, its bedlam.  Gord’s voice has an edge clearly channeling his manic on-stage antics:  I can see his limbs flashing about, his contorted face, and his tossing the mic stand around.

There’s injections of spoken word, a thunderous breakdown, and as the second half comes down the two guitars are joined by a third which is throwing flourishes hither and thither.  Gord’s voice only gets louder, more frantic, he’s screaming these verses, right up until his voice nearly breaks.

Lyrically, and in the liner notes’ artwork, this song is built as a conversation.  I’ve scanned the booklet pages for end image since I think it’s interesting – This might be the only album where the liner notes are used to enhance the song.  If you scrolled down you’ll see…

*PRETEND*
… a similarly constructed song, mirroring “Kids.”  Sonically, that is the case – This one is down-tempo, rippling piano, Gord’s as soft as ever at the beginning, and appears to be the perspective opposite the previous bombastic piece.  I hated this one even more than the last one.

The previous song was filled with strange imagery, of squids and elk, but in comparison this sounds like saying “pretend” for two minutes.  Not a huge fan, but I don’t write it off as I once did.  I dislike the “yes I can” repetition a lot.  The instruments are all bunched together at the end and its not great, very messy.

*LAST NIGHT I DREAMED YOU DIDN’T LOVE ME*
The title of this song makes me think I’ll hate it. But the first thing we hear is a spooky refrain:

“You kissed my fingers and made me love you”

It’s fantastic, though the song abandons the spookiness to move into a more traditional sound and structure but returns to this line in the same way a few times.  Gord keeps things odd with some sinister words:

“Last night when we went to hell
When the blood-starred curtain fell
Men were turning on their machines, making everything mean
Fires burned, cold values clashed
Good and evil were all dry grass
No child-ghost, no singing bird, no last laugh, no last word”

Dreamlike.  As I’m going through this I’m getting the impression this song is about a man stuck out in the cold, suffering hypothermia and what’s kissing his fingers is frostbite – Symbolic of this traumatic break-up.  I know Gord is human like the rest of us, but I find this a pedestrian metaphor for him, even if its well executed musically.

*THE DROP OFF*
Ooooooooh baby!  This feels like a straight-up callback to the early 90s albums with the intro guitar (It sounds exactly like a sped-up “New Orleans is Sinking”), but as the whammy’d second guitar comes in you know you’re up for an re-invention.  I love how you can hear the drumsticks clacking.  Combine that with a psychotic Gord flying off the handle.  The lyrics are flying out of his mouth as though he’s not speaking them, they’re demons escaping some prison.  He’s using a high pitch that could be a crone from a horror movie.  He’s a joy to sing alone with.

This track is dirty and murky, like opening your eyes underwater while swimming in a lake – It’s just brown or green and your vision can only take you a few feet ahead.  The sandy bottom, if you can reach it, will jump out at you.

“The fates are amok and spun, measured and out and the past is meant to please us
Yer a comet from earth in a Kiss Alive shirt
Saying "Holy Fuck it's Jesus," the surface is green and the dark interweaves in a lonely iridescence
It's terribly deep and the cold is complete and it only lacks your presence and nothing else”

This is what I’ve been looking for this whole album.  It’s my only fix, sadly.  By far the best song.

*FAMILY BAND*
You can likely guess how this one goes from the title.  It’s good!  It feels very tame after the lunacy of “The Drop Off,” but we had to surface at some point.  Too bad its sooner rather than later.  Still, its not a bad song.  It’s peppy, fun, and I adore the middle two stanzas:

“One day I'll make some honest rock n roll
Full of hand claps and gang vocals
I'm gonna get all the children involved
We're gonna get lost on all you locals
We'll be a shade shy of true wickedness
We'll be a shade shy of truly loving this
There are other things we'll rather be doing
Sure, even nothing, even nothing with you

We'll load out through the snow
Through small groups of people smoking
Hey! Get that kick drum loaded!
Into the backseat folded down!
We'll go virtually unnoticed
What's gripping the city ain't hitting the town
We'll be a shade shy of true wickedness
We'll be a shade shy of truly loving it”

Gord should be able to paint this scene since no doubt he and the boys lived this exactly.  Great stuff.  The first two verses talk about a guy being a bit dumb, and the later verses are him saying he’s going to start a band.  It seems like his venture is likely to fail, but god damnit they’re going to have fun all the same.

*WORLD CONTAINER*
A piano ballad.  Yep.  It’s not my favourite but it works.  The drums on this track boom throughout.  This feels like a grand finale, as though this isn’t ending the album, it’s ending the band.  If this was the last song they ever recorded, I would consider it a great send-off.  It isn’t, but still.  Everybody gets onto this track and it feels like when a band will introduce the players at the end or beginning, with each one doing a little riff as their name is called out.  It’s not quite on-the-nose as that, but that's the vibe.

[video=youtube;SPeK3_FuhnI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPeK3_FuhnI[/video]

So, _World Container_.  No doubt about it, it’s grown on me.  Once I found it to be the deal-breaker, but on further inspection I found it to be _In Between Evolution_ but smoothed out.  IBE had massive highs and awful lows, this one was solid right through with little variation.  I’m pleasantly surprised.



With all that said, wait patiently while I find the time to bang out the thirteenth installment.


----------



## BadHouses (Oct 31, 2019)

Information comes from the album liner notes, Wikipedia, Google, and special mention goes to hipmuseum dot com. All errata are entirely mine alone. Also, this format’s pale imitation was consciously and unconsciously stolen from mrmustard615 and Trollheart.

It's 2009 and I'm not paying attention, Bob.



Arguably the Tragically Hip were taken outside their comfort zone by Bob Rock on the polished _World Container_. I've seen suggestion that it was as good as it was in spite of a meddling Rock. I suspect some combination of the two. With Rock's fiddling and production, the band were indeed looking into new arrangements and sounds, but we're able to largely resist any excessive commercialization of a renowned hit-maker. After all, their sound has never been inaccessible.

_We are the Same_ is the second record with Bob at the controls and it gives the impression that he got his way this time. For one, this group could be renamed "Gord Downie and his Tragically Hip band". The boys are also joined in the studio by a harem of backing singers (on the songs where God's voice isn't simply overdubbed on itself), a 14-piece string group, pianos, all of which supplant the typical rock band setup.

If I had to give a word to describe this album: Starbucks. The first half in particular, though enjoyable, feels like it was meant to ooze onto fashionable folk on their laptops.  _We are the Same_ sold decently, and did debut at #1 on the Canadian charts, but I barely remember the release. The Fully & Completely podcast brought to my attention the order of the singles off this album.  While in the recording it's clear they were going mostly for a country-folk campfire song vibe, the first single they released was "Love is a Curse." It's an oddball rock track, with awkward spoken sections. It appears they were trying to emulate the live rants, but it does not work at all. I like them, but nothing about them seems spontaneous. How could they? The magic of the rants is you never know where they'll appear, what they'll be about, etc. They're baked into the song. And Live Between Us this ain't.

The second single was another rocker, and one of the worst on the album, "Speed River." I'd never even heard this before spinning the album. And finally, they release a song that actually speaks to the albums focus and was radio friendly, "Morning Moon." It seems like marketing was trying to sell a rock album, but the band was making a country album.  In short, the release seems grossly mishandled.

None of this affected me at the time. By 2009 I had become a fully fledged music fanatic and I was digging through the back catalogs of all the obscure bands, louder, noisier, and weirder than anything the Hip could provide. A radio-friendly album would not suffice while in an open BDSM relationship with my ears involving Big Black, Jesus Lizard, and Killdozer to name a few.

*TRACK LIST*​
*MORNING MOON*
From the first verse I notice something is different.  It isn’t the lovely folk sound, poppier and showier than usual.  It isn’t the backing vocals, though those too are atypical with unusual computerized warble.  What strikes me first is the plainness of the lyrics crooned by Gord.  The simplicity works in this track, but the Hip’s verbose words are part of the draw for me.  This song feels full, with acoustic and steel guitar, ample backing vocals all melding into a nice track.  Tame, but decent.

*HONEY, PLEASE*
Piano heavy, with humungous drums, and more acoustic strings plinking in the background.  This is faster, and as the first verse ends we get electric guitars swinging in and sticking around until the end to make this a nice, easy rock song.  This is a gorgeous, understated song.  Lyrics stay simple and they work.  It’s just a nice expression of love.

“Whenever I get lost
Whenever I feel weak
Whenever or just because
You whisper it to me”

Gord gets to unleash a little after the reserved first track, going falsetto and surging in its familiar way.  The whole outro has a falsetto guitar solo which I find pretty and tasteful.

*THE LAST RECLUSE*
Another cute song, this time describing a cold breakup.  One character seems to be leaving while the other asks why they’re being so dramatic about it.

“We rode hard for the boat, hard as we could 
‘No tears’, you said, ‘understood?’
"Understood!?" 
I said, ‘Awright’”

In the middle there’s a huge backing vocal overpowering everything.  It sounds a bit Disney.  Once again the song has instruments added until the end is a mass of sounds.  This one is okay.  I find the “oo” sounds that Gord holds every chorus a tad annoying.

*COFFEE GIRL*
Starbucks, man.  This song depicts a baristo coming in to work and finding one of his regular customers upon whom he is crushing has entered with her beau.  Big drums return.  Twanging returns.

“It was perfect 'til 
He came along and wrecked it”

Meh.  I like the concept, but the song is lame.  Musically its similar to "Morning Moon."  Its sweet and lovely.  The chorus, of course, gets huge.  We get a trumpet solo in the middle that I enjoy, a simple noodley couple phrases.  So far it feels like every song wants to be two things – A little acoustic number, but also a big showy epic.  Despite all that, I enjoy the song.

*NOW THE STRUGGLE HAS A NAME*
In Canada the First Nations people have it rough.  There are reservations in the North without plumbing, running water, schools, and other essentials.  Out in BC there is what has been called an “epidemic” of missing indigenous women who tend be found dead months or years later.  As such, there are a large number of advocates who believe these issues require immediate governmental attention.  Gord Downie is one of those people and while he’s feathered across those topics on other albums, here we get it addressed about as bluntly as we can expect from poetical Gord.
This song, given its subject matter, acts like a black spot on the album.  I wonder if that was the intent, considering it could be seen as a black spot marring the beautiful, bountiful country in which these things are happening.

“Oh, Honey Watson 
We were born with sin 
Some truth, some reconciliation 
And gone with the wind”

The Truth & Reconciliation Commission is a group “with the purpose of documenting the history and lasting impacts of the Canadian Indian residential school system on Indigenous.”  As in many colonized nations the European settlers took it upon themselves to raise and re-educate the native inhabitants.  In Canada, that system of re-education was called the residential school.  The last of these schools closed in 1996.  If this topic interests you, here’s la wik.

If I’m being completely honest, I think this song beautifully captures the feeling, the sadness of this topic, but it does not broach it intellectually or candidly.  It’s repetitive and vague.  I do find one line fairly savage:

“Now, the apology done 
Applause can begin”

The album title is also sung which seems odd considering this topic is never touched on again.  Were the band concerned with these things but hampered by production?  Could we have had a more socially aware or heart-felt album?  I can only speculate.

Gord provides his own backing vocals which sounds awkward.  Aquatic guitar, booming choruses once again, and we get hit with the strings which sound flat.  Sometimes I skip this one.

*THE DEPRESSION SUITE*
*The Rock*
The first of a three-part suite unique in the Hip discography, unless you count that two-fer on _World Container_.  Annoyingly the CD doesn’t split these up into tracks.  This one starts much the same as everything else so far, but we immediately get more personal lyrics from Gord.  Finally, I’ve been waiting.  We also get some nice hooks on the chorus that I adore.  This section seems to paint the image of a depressed person who is merely hearing the world outside as it rushes past.

“Under the pillow 
I bury my head and try and shut Chicago out 
As it turns out, there's a whole other world of sounds 
Of perfect fifths, low skids, and Arctic howls 

All saying, are you going through something? 
Are you going through something?

Under the pillow, a little room to breathe 
The early morning light's a pale cranberry 
I hear the Aah-aah-aah, not now-wow-wow 
Of a siren far away and closing steadily 

Saying, are you going through something? 
Are you going through something? 
Cause I.. I.. I am too”

While we’re delving into the mind of someone in a bad situation, he song retains an optimistic tone.  This is not unexpected since the Hip have an unerring optimist streak – In nearly every album there are affirmations of life and love and that “they’re exquisite.”

*New Orleans World*
Part two switches quickly from a slower, wistful sound to a peppy one (Though I wouldn’t call it overjoyed.)  We seem to have a character whose outlook is changing.  The opening lines are my absolute favourite moment on the album.  There’s something that stirs and satisfies my soul by Gord’s vocal moguls and the luscious strings bouncing in time.  All he says is “Gimme-gimme-gimme” but ITS. SO. GOOD.

Our protagonist wants to be “put […] in the saddle,” he has work to do and can’t “lounge online.”

*Don’t You Wanna See How It Ends?*
This song stays slow, but we get a banging guitar to make this a real rock song.  The strings are still humming in behind and Gord is letting loose.  The end of the song sees a tight little solo.  It’s big, but it feels like it should be.  The doors are opening, the light is visible, and things are gonna get better.  This entire suite is the highlight of the album, with middle section being the best of it.

*THE EXACT FEELING*
The second half of the album goes rock full-time.  We start with a decent number that I find most notable for a guitar that sounds like a didgeridoo.  I’m lovin’ it.  Apart from that, this is pleasant.  We get a callback to a line from “Honey, Please.”  Nothing much of note otherwise.

*QUEEN OF THE FURROWS*
This is weird one.  It starts with a Caribbean rhythm, then blends country & rock.  On top of that it’s written like a corny musical where they narrate the thing they’re doing:

“You are my heart, oh my Queen of the Furrows 
This is how I farm, eyes up and ears down low 
You are my heart, you're my Queen of the Furrows 
This how I feel, hens cluck and roosters crow”

“This is how we farm” always make me laugh.  I see a line of actors on the stage hoeing and sowing in time with the beat.  But the chorus is bad ass!  Even when he says “This is how we farm” like he’s giving the Man the middle finger.  AND THEN there’s a face-melter guitar solo!  This song is unmitigated fun.

*SPEED RIVER*
A track inspired by the band’s 90s bar-band sound.  It’s toothless.  I do love this Mel Brooks-y line:

“Hard stuff.
Give me a dose of the hard stuff. 
Okay, enough.
Okay, enough of the hard stuff.”

This song mimes the themes of “Leave” off _In Violet Light_ but done less amazingly.  The lyrics are barely existent.  Decent solo at the end, but not something they’ve ever played before.  I think I hear Johnny Fay for the first time during a lull where I think he’s playing nice rhythmic rim shots.

*FROZEN IN MY TRACKS*
At this point in the album, I’m thinking “is this going to end?”  Nope, we’ve still got 3 meaty tracks.  I often turn the album off because it doesn’t feel worth going on.

The song starts out as “Undone” by Weezer.  Then you get guitar crunches from Radiohead’s “Creep.”  Then you get big rock “Woah-woahs.” The verses sound a little “Say It Ain’t So.”  Why, guys? Why?  SKIP.

*LOVE IS A FIRST*
Basically, a B-side from _World Container_.  Not terrible.  Big rock thing. As mentioned in the intro there are some ill-conceived "rants" here.  I still like the segments since they are unique on the album and they sound cool and creepy.

*COUNTRY DAY*
Fuck this song.

Okay, maybe don’t.  It’s competent.  And if you made it this far you might as well complete your hour-long journey.

*BONUS TRACKS*
*HUSH*
Gord tries his Tom Waits impression.  I quite like it!  It’s incredibly left-field for the Hip.  And a dirty filthy no-good rotten scoundrel of a guitar cuts in after a couple stanzas that is bluesy as all get out.  A short, awesome song.  Listen here.

*SKELETON PARK*
Space-age intro with an oscilloscope soundscape, a nice drum sliding into place, then the twanging guitar, then acoustic, and finally Gord’s voice over top of it all.  I don’t know what doofus cut this.  It feels more classic Hip, but I also catch a big whiff of Interpol.  Reverse guitar snippet in there, nice loud-quiet-loud thing going on.  The only version of this song I found at hipmuseum and it’s a rough cut, but still sounds great.

[video=youtube;evnBn66fUrg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evnBn66fUrg[/video]

The album itself is a big fat meh with some nice selections.  I’ve used and abused all the middling and slightly condescending adjectives here: Nice. Lovely. Pleasant. Enjoyable. Decent.
Spotify, Starbucks, and YouTube are the way to listen to this one because it’s a slog.  I wouldn’t call it bad, but it is their worst album to date without reservation.



With all that said, wait patiently while I find the time to bang out the fourteenth installment.


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## BadHouses (Nov 1, 2019)

Information comes from the album liner notes, Wikipedia, Google, and special mention goes to hipmuseum dot com. All errata are entirely mine alone. Also, this format’s pale imitation was consciously and unconsciously stolen from mrmustard615 and Trollheart.

2012



_Now for Plan A_ is an album that I was unaware of.  I’d seen the cover in record stores, but I’d never heard a single track nor did I even know the Hip were still recording.  By this year I was going down so many musical rabbit holes I missed it completely.  I wanted to push boundaries, find diamonds, and travel back through the decades to genres that were as eccentric as possible.  Again, the Hip didn’t feed that need.  Little did I know that Bob Rock was out and something special was waiting for me to uncover.

Between 2009 and 2012 Gord’s wife was diagnosed with cancer and with the family stricken, the album was delayed.  Thankfully, she can now count herself among survivors.  The doom hanging over her and her kin is all over this album which seeps with the sorrow, “anger, fear, impatience (…) and love.”  It's in the heart-breaking lyrics, which have emerged from the ashes of _We are the Same_ and his malignant troubles with a force yet unseen; it’s in his straining voice; it’s in the lamenting, uplifting, and hateful guitars.

Gord’s involvement with First Nations advocacy grew during this time and those topics are here as a bold and uncomfortable denoument in "Goodnight Attawapiskat."  The song was inspired by trips he took to the titular First Nation.

It’s a shame I missed this one.  It was lauded critically, it was their highest charting album in the US (It peaked at #129 on the Billboard 200!), and I really enjoy it.  It wouldn’t have satisfied me back in the day, but I’m glad I’ve taken the time to come back and dig in.  Once I find a used copy, this one’s going in the collection.

*TRACK LIST*
*AT TRANSFORMATION*
An obese bass line starts the show and as the grinding, winding guitars circle one another, I feel we’ve come somewhere ominously familiar.  This might be the most unrestrained vocal performance by Gord I’ve heard.  Maybe a bit too familiar, its still rocks hard and kicks you in the heart.  The chorus especially rips me open.  There are some guitar passages that sound like bagpipes, which I like.  The flimsiness of _WatS_ is completely blown away.  This track seems to be a statement that the boys are in a different place and you’re going to hear about every nasty detail.

“Gently breathing
Lit by the morning sun
Through the night
It had been raining venom
I don't want to be kind
Not a bullet in the right place
Or just of two minds
More important than important

I want to help you lift enormous things
A pinch, a sting, I don't feel a thing
As the Earth revolved around the sun”

The song ends by dissolving into fuzz.  An incredible track.

*MAN MACHINE POEM*
Oh, my lord.  Gord’s voice is ripping my heart to shreds on this one.  It’s echoing as though calling out from some place in the beyond.  Only three brief stanzas, each preceded by the band crescendoing as though propelling Gord into the sky to belt it out.  This song is apparently Downie’s side of conversations had with his wife.  The first reads like he’s the fearful husband assuaging his fears, or perhaps his courageous wife doing such, regarding the course of treatment:

“See
It works
In monkeys
You're right
Again
But it is a thin win”

A final crescendo sees the song break and we’re left with what sounds like a beating heart playing us out.  This song is one of a few in this world that I can barely listen to because they so utterly overwhelm me with emotion.

[video=youtube;nPPQ3Rxxwsc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPPQ3Rxxwsc[/video]

*THE LOOKAHEAD*
Gord: “That you know everything's going to be all right, no matter what. And she's got it. She always had it, but it diminished at that moment a little bit. And you realize how much you need it. How much I rely on it. And she's got it back.”

As such, this song is upbeat and starkly happy compared to the first two, featuring Sara Harmer.  While Gord is looking for that “look ahead,” he is still filled with reservation and doubt.  But in the trying times when so much is outside his control, it is no surprise that Gord maintains the positivity.  It’s written into every album before and it’s beautiful that he lives as he creates.

“I go back to the brusque nurse
Her heart a bad cake in a melting box
I thought you should know, it's no worse
Her blood is still clear and sanguineous”

The video features an artsy mariachi-backed sketch with Gord in a sombrero.  I thought it worth mentioning.  Great song.  We’ve got an amazing start.

*WE WANT TO BE IT*
I don’t think I can handle this one either.

“Drip, drip, drip
Baby, when'd you get so Zen?
Drip, drip
When I used to know you when
Drip, drip
When you thought all my dreams sucked
Drip, drip
I was just happy you gave a fuck
Drip, drip

And we don't want to do it
Drip, drip, drip
We want to be it
Drip, drip, drip”

Even knowing they made it through all this doesn’t alleviate the beating this song gives me.  The “drip drip drips” are savage, cutting through the softer, slower acoustic backing which seems content to let Gord yell.

This song sees Gord watching his wife with an IV, a motif that has already appeared in several places.  She’s spaced out, she’s weakening, she’s losing weight, she’s lethargic, she’s in pain – And yet:

“Drip, drip, drip
Baby, when'd you get so wrecked?
Drip, drip
And where are things at this moment?
Drip, drip
And all our friends gave us a week
Drip, drip
And we're still happening as we speak
Drip, drip”

*STREETS AHEAD*
Muddy, bass-heavy sound that bounds forward into a sweeping chorus.  The song rushes you forward which seems to be the point.

“You were streets ahead, I couldn't sleep a wink
Staring in the dark, by the light of your skin
At myself sitting, on a suitcase
Or as the sleeping youth, in the upset sleigh

They don't wait
They won't wait
They run with the weather
They don't wait”

Good song, but after the rollercoaster of the past few tracks this feels flat.

*NOW FOR PLAN A*
The title track is slower than anything before.  Sadness drips from the sweet acoustic strumming, with barely perceptible strands of washed out, distorted guitars in the background.  The title is haunting – There’s no backup here: either the treatment works, or the worst comes to pass.  Sara Harmer joins in again and she’s a perfect choice.

The simplicity here works great and you get a sad, pretty track.

“Yeah, I know, I know, I know
Now for Plan A
I'll stay till the wisteria fades
And falls on L.A.
No matter how high or how rough
Nothing short of everything's enough”

*THE MODERN SPIRIT*
Intro sounds like “Thompson Girl” off _Phantom Power_.  A cute rocker.  The outro sounds like a Disney cartoon song:

“Can't you just hear it, hear it, hear it?
Winter counting everything, we're near it
We're getting nearer, nearer, nearer
Friendship changing everything, we're near it
I can hear it”

I’m not sure what the modern spirit is.

*ABOUT THIS MAP*
What it says on the tin – An analogy of a map.  Considering the topics at hand, the map most apparent to me is the path through one’s life, and the map of a cancer treatment plan.  Looking forward, and looking backward.  But the map only goes so far:

“About this map, it's a bit out of date, yeah
Territories shifted, and things get renamed
There's coups, revolutions, and boundaries blur
Volcanoes and earthquakes turn words into birds

It's certain, certain
You want to, want to
Certain, certain
You want to, want to, want to

But, oh, about this map
It goes beyond, beyond
And, oh about this map
About this map”

I like the song lyrically, but its bland musically.

*TAKE FOREVER*
I thought this was Arcade Fire’s “Wake Up” at first.  Other than that, the song doesn’t make much impression on me.

*DONE AND DONE*
Gord’s always used repetition to dramatic effect.  This one doesn’t work for me on that front, feeling slow and overlong even at 2:52.

*GOODNIGHT ATTAWAPISKAT*
Eerie into and the band busts in in classic style.  There’s an ominous sound though, and knowing Attawapiskat is a northern First Nations village, I know what’s in store.

The verses are spoken by “Silver Poets” on a stage, in their “thousand mile suits.”  I read somewhere that silver poets are politicians and any others who orate down from a position of privilege, and who whisk into and out of a city.

Attawapiskat is a First Nation on James Bay. It is small, remote, and exemplifies the existence faced by First Nations around the country.  It is accessible by helicopter and ice roads.  They subsist on fishing and hunting, and though they sit upon diamond resources, they don’t see much of the diamonds nor their proceeds. Finally, they’re plagued by under-funding, both from a Federal perspective and due to grift from crooked chiefs and administrators.  Its no surprise homes and facilities are often unfit for habitation, the water needs to be boiled, and feral dogs invade on occasion.

In more recent news, though its something that has long history, First Nations like Attawapiskat also suffer from rashes of suicide attempts, so many that the hospitals are overwhelmed.  In a nation around 1500, 5% attempted suicide between September 2015 and April 2016.

From hipmuseum dot com:

“He told the CBC that he was amused by the idea of a rock and roll front man confusing the town he was performing in for the northern Canadian community. The town that is always forgotten has somehow, to this fictional singer, become the town he can never forget. Downie speculated that he'd like to end every Hip show by screaming ‘Goodnight Attawapiskat!’”

“Hello! Good evening, folks
We are the Silver Poets
Here in our thousand mile suits
We're here to get paid
We know nobody ever who got laid
Telling people what to do”

This record is incredible and a fantastic return to form.  I don’t regret missing it because its themes and subject matter would not have touched me the way it does today. It’s fantastic.  It’s gut-punching.  It’s so much better than I ever thought possible.



With all that said, wait patiently while I find the time to bang out the fifteenth and final installment.


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## BadHouses (Nov 6, 2019)

Information comes from the album liner notes, Wikipedia, Google, and special mention goes to hipmuseum dot com. All errata are entirely mine alone. Also, this format’s pale imitation was consciously and unconsciously stolen from mrmustard615 and Trollheart.

From 1986 to 2016.



Welcome to an extra special, celebratory rum-soaked edition of a Bad History of the Tragically Hip.  Rest assured that all writing and revision were completed with a healthy buzz on.  I really didn’t think I’d get this far, so yay for sticking with it!

Here we are: _Man Machine Poem_, the latest release from the inimitable Tragically Hip.  It’s been 30 years of music by this point and apart from a couple of minor detours, they’ve turned out excellent record after excellent record.  They are a Canadian institution – They’re known and adored by their fans, non-fans can unwittingly sing along to the hits with ease, and the detractors will never be free of them.

_Man Machine Poem_ was produced by Kevin Drew (of Broken Social Scene) and Dave Hamelin (of the Stills) and is obviously named after a track on the last album.  The original title was _Dougie Stardust_, but was changed last minute after David Bowie passed away in January 2016.

I only realised this album existed that year when I happened to see it in a checkout stand at Wal-Mart.  Still having not heard anything since _We are the Same_, I passed it by.  Was it yet another mistake?

This album dropped in June, soon after a startling May revelation that shocked the entire nation: Gord Downie had been diagnosed with glioblastoma, brain cancer, in December of 2015, and was undergoing treatment.  While this record was made well before that diagnosis, one can’t help but transpose the aching lyrics about his wife onto what Gord himself would soon be undergoing.

*TRACK LIST*
*MAN*
Unexpectedly we get a speech sample distorted into alien freakery to start the show.  Highly unusual for the Hip.  I’d call it experimental, but they only do it once on the album, and other than creating a spooky introduction, it doesn’t do much for me.

The music plops in nicely and wanders forward with a typical Hip saunter, but furthering the disappointment, the very first vocal notes of the song are… well, bad.  Intentionally so, I think, but that doesn’t make them more entertaining.  I do like that the very first lines (“I/You’re a real machine.”) are ones which we’ll revisit later.

Droning, ambient guitar drops in around half-way and the song picks up a little.  It’s as though the album is coalescing from chaos into structure.  We get a synth (I think?) interlude which comes and goes quickly, but which totally solidifies the whole piece.  I come into this song disliking it, and I leave impressed.  An odd experience.

*IN A WORLD POSESSED BY THE HUMAN MIND*
We return to classic Hip sound and composition, plain and clear-cut.  The very first words are so perfectly ominous:

“Just gimme the news”

Never a good combination of those words.  And followed by “It can all be lies” tells of awfulness.  The song is dark and terrifying.  I love the whole sound.  The drums beat like a heart and the guitar tinkles in and out.  The song is focused on Gord’s voice which totally sells it.  This song lives on Gord’s cadence, it brings a world of feeling to the track that is mysterious and intuitively wonderful.

I’m reminded very vividly of Arcade Fire’s _Funeral_ all the way to the end.  The drums, the brooding, everything.

*WHAT BLUE*
Another stellar performance by Gord and hinging upon the way he rattles off the words and holds on certain syllables.  He seems to have this skill to do so in such a way as to produce an off-beat musicality.  Sometimes there’s too many beats, sometimes too few, but I think the balance makes it magical.  I feel a tremendous anticipation for the titular refrain, I always want to jump to it in singing along.

While the music in the first two songs felt a tad unremarkable, here it plays off his voice perfectly.  Lots of crunchy guitar.  And the first half has a tension, as though the guitar wants to unleash and finally it gets to fuzzily sing off into and canyon still echoing with Gord.

“I love you so much it distorts my life
What drove and drives you drove and drives me too
When I think I’m clear, I think I’m doing fine, completely absorbed in what blue”

To me, he’s hopelessly wrapped up looking into her eyes, always happily returning to her overwhelming beautiful love.  Fabulous song.  Makes me cry.

*IN SARNIA*
Not crazy about this one.  I find the instrumentation bland.  Gord is out there on this one.  It’s like he’s trying sing a John Coltrane sax improv.  I am immediately compelled to press >>.

Squonky guitar climax, then things plonk off to the end.

*HERE, IN THE DARK*
The first few drum notes betray the future of this song.  Fay gives a quick little flourish, then settles into a casual beat.  Within 30 seconds, Gord chimes in with the first couple lines and the song takes off running.  Love the way it builds and then launches into the chorus, as though Gord can barely contain the lyrics trying to leap ahead of him.  Everything feels messy and rushed, but it works.  Delightful.

*GREAT SOUL*
More droning, this time like radio static behind a very casual jam session. Honestly, it got me thinking Tool! Which is cool!  I like the experience of this song.  Like “Man,” it has an overall sensation that I really get into, even if lyrically it doesn’t blow me away.  It’s anxious and fearful and ends with “Nothing works and I’m out of ideas.”  It doesn’t feel like a downer, but boy, it sure sings like one.

*TIRED AS FUCK*
Often attributed to Gord given his recent diagnosis, but again, this was written before his treatments.  Seeing his wife weakened by that experience and being a relative in and out of the hospital nigh daily will do that to you.  The drum sound is loud, and the watery guitar sounds fresh even if it’s a Hip staple.

I like this song for that frank statement.  The Hip has uses cusses in their works before, but this one sticks with me.

*HOT MIC*
Damn, this one pounds in like you oughta take notice.  Fay’s front and center here setting a pace of doom.
This is the first errant lyrical track.  My attraction to music sees me searching for the weird and off-the-wall.  I like songs about little things, big things, newsy things, all sorts of weird stuff.  This is a great addition to that addiction.

“I am the hot mic, I pick up asides, of the modern tyrant
‘…laws of the shadows, colours of justice’,”

More doominess, more ambience.  They’re wearing this left-turn on both sleeves.  I’m beginning to think this is hardly a Hip album at all.  If I were a busier music nerd, I would compare it to something familiar.

I love that you can hear Fay’s sticks clatter as he stops drumming.

*OCEAN NEXT*
Another take on quasi-ambient, or possibly a smidge of shoegaze-iness?  Gord has a fizzled and computer-distorted voice that seems to emphasize the sound of the vowels above the lyrical content, though even that is dream-like.  Minimal instrumentation.  Love this unusual take.

“Ocean next, ‘the thousand pictures'
Better than sex or salt n vinegar chips”

MAJOR Modest Mouse vibes here.

*MACHINE*
We finish where we began, with “I/You’re a real machine,” but this time the song is not uncertain of amorphous, it is crystal clear and classically constructed.  Huge guitars, huge drums, big backing vocals.  The final chorus has a mechanical guitar whine that trades jibes with Downie.

The take-away here is this album is friggin great.  Leave it to the Hip to deliver a new sound that prioritizes the music and the eyes-closed pleasure of sound over the decades heavy focus on lyricism, though its still there if you care to read it.  I don’t even find it necessary.  Awesome.  As with the last, when I find a used copy, it's taking a well-deserved place in my collection.

[video=youtube;LOTYVpRAoS0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOTYVpRAoS0[/video]

With all that said, wait patiently while I find the time to bang out the...

 Well that's it.  Holy cow.  According to Word, which contains most of this thread, I've banged out at least 20,000 words. What a wholly unexpected turnout.

*A huge thank you to Trollheart and mrmustard615 for providing the inspiration to prattle about my favourite band.  Your epic and ceaseless contributions to this board are amazing.  Thanks!

*


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## Deleted member 56686 (Nov 7, 2019)

So, who's next?


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## BadHouses (Nov 7, 2019)

Actually, we're not quite done...

In 2016 I was in Fredericton, New Brunswick road tripping the Maritimes, having never been out that easterly direction. Fredericton is the capital, but it’s a small city; Felt like you could walk its length in minutes. On the waterfront is a plaque which describes an incredible of fortitude: During the war of 1812 five-hundred fifty-four soldiers marched for 11 months through the winter and mountains from that little town to reinforce the city of Kingston. I was flabbergasted.

In the downtown we ambled after dinner to a square where some vendors had their stalls set up. Typical local stuff, beaded tchotchkes, dreamcatchers, band t-shirts, baked goods, all that. Alongside them was a large white screen, huge black speakers, and a projector. That night, the Tragically Hip were playing their final shows, 11 months-march away in their hometown. That performance was to be broadcast from coast to coast on screens just like this, and on jumbotrons on the cities that could afford such things.

The Hip are playing their last show from their last tour supporting their last album because earlier that year it was announced that Gord Downie has an inoperable brain tumor and the strain of playing was too much. I would learn in subsequent years and interviews that Gord’s memory was becoming so fragile that he sometimes forgot the names of his children. To make it through to the tour he would sing using six teleprompters since he could no longer remember the words which had penned over the last thirty years.



Being on vacation the news was sprinkled throughout our travels, coming up on the radio, TV news, and newspapers in between exploring the European streets of Québec City, the markets of Ottawa, and eventually the sleepy flat town of Fredericton. I think I was only dimly aware of the momentous things transpiring. We were seeing the sights, not contemplating the end of a musical era.

We hung around until dark when the concert began. The speakers were cranked up so loud that even the decades-old hits sounded like blown-out sludge. We couldn’t even sing along so we walked back to the car and returned to the hotel. It may have been anti-climactic, but in seeing the artefacting shadows on the screen the end of the Tragically Hip dawned on me. Finally.

That was August 20, 2016. October 17, 2017 Gord Downie passed away.



I was always that annoying guy who said “why so upset? You never knew the guy,” any time a celebrity died. Part of me still thinks “but my guy was special,” but I know it’s just foolishness. Gord was special, no doubt about it and he and the Hip brought an incalculable amount of good and beauty into the word in own their enigmatic way.  Even as he faced the inevitable, the glory of life was present in him. He was thankful, thankful! that providence allowed him a forewarning of death so that he could make use of his time to spend with his family, his band, his art, and his activism.

In combing through their catalogue, listening to songs I’ve heard a thousand times over, giving the post-_World Container_ material a fresh and earnest listen, I think I’ve come to appreciate these guys even more, and more still than I ever thought possible. In the course of research I found all sorts of articulate (and not) articles, opinions, comments, and reviews expressing admiration and appreciation parallel to my own.



When you love someone, you cannot imagine a world or a life without them. Just so with The Tragically Hip and our bud Gord Downie.


* * *

Gordon Edgar Downie was 53. He is survived by his four children and his wife, Laura (separated).


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## BadHouses (Nov 7, 2019)

mrmustard615 said:


> So, who's next?



I've been pondering that exact question.  Got a couple ideas...


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