REVIEWS:
It's understandable that many bands that are incredibly popular in Britain haven't made a splash on American soil, since, after all, there's an ocean between the two countries and the likes of S Club 7 are already spoken for in the form of legions of teen-pop divas. Canada, however, is a totally different story - they're America's next-door neighbor, for chrissake, yet they still have their own prolific, widespread musical culture of bands that seemingly almost nobody in America has heard of. All that us Yanks end up getting are the artists who are so mainstream that any cultural differences are totally insignificant and glossed over, like Celine Dion, or bands that have enough of a bizarre niche carved out that they're able to distinguish themselves outside of their home border, like Rush. The Tragically Hip certainly are hip, but hip to the values of a peace-loving Canadian society, which basically means that nobody at all will be able to name a single song they ever wrote once you cross the border into North Dakota. It's pretty sad, too, since they have more than a platypus's share of really good songs and a lyricist in frontman Gordon Downie who pens words that are so oblique and totally random and meaningless to anybody who isn't Gordon Downie that they make Michael Stipe's lyrics seem like a third grade poetry assignment in comparison. The music is considerably more conventional, but also thoroughly interesting, skillfilly played and, in the spirit of their fellow Canucks Sloan, they've generally managed to improve with time. At least, in your humble narrator's opinion.
--Rich Bunnell
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COMMENTS
[email protected] (Daniel Bader)
See teh hip live. If they're catchy on CD, they're nuts live. Trust me
Hey now. I just found the Music Junkie's site off of Mark Prindle's link page and was pleasantly surprised to find a series of Tragically Hip reviews. A fantastic, underrated band. If nothing else, us Yanks get the luxury of seeing them in 500 cap. venues surrounded by Canadians who drove 15 hours for the occasion.
I generally agree with every review you put up on the site...but just a few comments. Firstly, I didn't see a review for the live disc they put out in 1997, but I'm assuming you have a copy. If not, read the rest of this e-mail later, and get one now. There was also a comment on the Day for Night review about you assuming that they oughta open up every concert from there on out w/ Grace, Too....and while that definitely gets played quite a bit, their opening numbers usually reflect whatever record they're touring behind. On the last tour they alternated Use it Up with Silver Jet more or less every night. And while on the topic of IVL, listen to it more. I'd say its one of their warmest, most unassuming records to date, and The Dire Wolf is an absolute classic. It might have taken me the longest of all of their records to fully appreciate, but I'd argue that its their best since Fully. Take it easy.
dave g
(reviewed by Rich Bunnell)
I respect the fact that a lot of bands start out being totally indistinctive and generic, since they have to start somewhere, but it doesn't mean that they should make their equally-generic tossoff debut EP's available to the public. This album more closely resembles a record company demo tape as opposed to an official release, since it's only 27 minutes long and suffers from empty, hollow production values of the type that usually plague bands that haven't accumulated the scratch to afford luxuries like an actual producer. It's also admittedly very competent and listenable, with every single song hitting upon a solid, propulsive rock groove and not bothering to venture anywhere close to the dangerously experimental territory that a lot of other bands try and fail to tread on in their early years. In other words, it's a nice enough way to spend half an hour, but there's almost nothing that actually makes you hold your head up and go "Ooh! I want to hear that again!" It's fitting enough that the one real classic and live staple from this album is "Highway Girl," which has the same mid-tempo, repetitive, thwacking groove that a lot of bands had obviously already done several thousand times by this point in the history of rock music, but they felt the need to record it anyway. This isn't a bad EP at all, and the opening duo of "Small Town Bringdown" and "Last American Exit" is actually quite a wonderful way to kick off almost any band's career by all means, but like the stuff on the Pixies' Come On Pilgrim EP, this is just so conventional and normal compared to the much, much more interesting stuff that would come later that I personally don't find much use for it. The Hip would never grow into an incredibly complex band, but later on they at least had some decent production and loads interesting songwriting to back up their conventionality. These songs are just sort of.........there.
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(reviewed by Rich Bunnell)
Yes, I know, that last review was probably the single most boring thing I have ever written aside from that poli sci paper that I finished half an hour ago, but there's just not much you can say when a band releases a collection that just doesn't do anything. Even that last sentence was hard to write. Apparently it impressed their record label, though, since their full-length debut is packed with pretty much more of the same type of stuff, only with fuller, glossier production values and more of a sense of identity. Since I don't live there, I can't really say this with conviction, but I think this is the album considered the band's "classic" up there in frosty ol' Canada, and I'm pretty sure that "New Orleans Is Sinking" went on to become their biggest radio staple. Correct me if I'm wrong. To be completely honest, I've never cared very much for that song - it starts out with a great murky riff and has a decent tension-build between the first and second verses, but it kinda trails off from there into a limp half-jam that doesn't really go anywhere. Maybe it's a cultural thing, which is kind of weird since Canadian culture isn't very different from American culture - hell, the song even has "New Orleans" in the title.
Cultural distance or not, I'm not nearly as fond of this album as my Mountie brethren up north (which is a fair thing to say, since here in America every single person is either a police officer or a member of the military). Sonically, it's an improvement over the debut EP, but the songwriting is only a little bit better, and sometimes the all-out glossiness really gets to me, though not nearly as much as it will in a couple of albums. Once again, too many of the songs are just songs - plus, in addition to the song being kind of generic, it's always sort of annoyed me that instead of using the song title "I'll Believe In You (Or I'll Be Leavin' You)" as an excuse for subtle ambiguity, they make the chorus "I'll believe in you, or I'll be leavin' you, TONIGHT!" Come on guys, when you have the chance to display cleverness, do it - it separates you from the pack. The pack that writes boring, do-nothing songs like "Boots Or Hearts," "Trickle Down" and "Opiated." That bad, icky pack. The pack that Matchbox 20 would be happily joining in about seven years without realizing how thoroughly uninteresting everything they would ever record would turn out.
Hey look, I just spent two paragraphs insulting an album that I don't hate! This isn't crappy stuff, and it definitely shows a marked improvement from the absolute genericisms of that debut EP thing. I just think it's kind of overrated. Still, I'm willing to put my prejudices on hold for a bit to let it be known that I flat-out love the opener "Blow At High Dough," which proves that Garth Brooks-ish rock song structures aren't necessarily a bad thing as long as Garth Brooks isn't involved, "38 Years Old" is a creepy acoustic-driven boiler which is probably a lot more lyrically complex than simply being the story of a 38-year-old who hasn't got any, but I'm gonna act like it is anyway, and "Another Midnight" is shiny jankly pop bliss, even if it kinda sounds like "Last American Exit" from the debut EP. As for most of the rest, well, it's good, but it just kinda lacks the distinctiveness and grit that would go on to characterize the Hip that my xenophobic American ass fell in love with. What you gonna do about me?
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COMMENTS
This is my least favorite TH album. That's not to say it isn't good, it is, it's just that compared to their later releases, this one comes up short. This is the Hip at their most basic-sounding. "New Orleans is Sinking" and "Blow at High Dough" are two songs that measure up to anything they would later do, and considering what was out at the time, this is still a pretty good album. However, I bought this one after I bought all the others first, so this one I don't play nearly as much as the others.
(reviewed by Rich Bunnell)
I'm just gonna have to confess it right here - I'm really not too big on this early Hip stuff. As I said before, this is probably a sign that I'm just totally out of touch with the band's roots, since their first three full-length albums are, to my knowledge, far and away their most popular in Canadia, and I personally just don't get much out of them. On the other hand, I love almost everything that Sloan has ever recorded, so it's probably just a matter of taste. Whatever the case, this album sounded really good on the first few listens and kind of wore thin thereafter. I have nothing against good driving rock, and this album offers it up in spades, but this stuff is just way too cleanly produced to qualify as great rock music to my ears, and a lot of the songs strike me as sort of hookless and indistinguished. Who needs six minutes of a clomping bore like "Fight," for example? And according to the AMG, the Hip are the only band ever to record a song called "Long Time Running," but they sure make it sound like as much of a cliche as possible with its rudimentary country-folk arrangement - no thanks.
The saving grace on here is that the band is slowly becoming more distinctive and unique. This isn't so much true for the obligatory ass-kicking single "Little Bones," but uneasy stuff like "The Luxury" and uptempo funk-riffage festivals like "Twist My Arm" tread just outside of obvious territory and show the bandmembers actually adjusting to a unique songwriting niche other than "chugging mid-tempo rockers." My favorite on the album is probably "Cordelia," which is essentially the exact same song as "38 Years Old," but it rocks a little harder and has a pretentious Lear reference tacked onto it, or so I assume from the title (I don't actually listen to lyrics very closely, I'm shallow). "Three Pistols" is a bit more conventional and has a hell of an annoying backing vocalist who jumps in during the chorus and sounds kind of like what Geddy Lee would sound like if he were deported to the South and castrated, but it's a good tune anyway, kind of in the Up To Here straightforward style of songwriting, but if it were on that album it would've ended up being one of the best songs so it's not too much of a gripe.
Everything else just doesn't grab my brain, to be honest, with the possible exception of the pretty "Fiddler's Green" (another country-rock cliche, but this time the song's a lot better) - it's the same standard boogie-ish stuff that didn't appeal to me the last two times around, and uptempo and superficially appealing as "On The Verge" and "Born In The Water" are, I just don't find them to be anything particularly praiseworthy. I like this band - honest - but this clean, conventional riff-rocking sound just doesn't display them in a particularly impressive light. Anyone can do this stuff. Then again, anyone can do their later stuff too, but that's where good ol' subjectivity comes in.
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(reviewed by Rich Bunnell)
Y'know, if I were one of those badass mace-wielding knights back in medieval times, I'd probably find it highly preferable to my profession if my mace were covered in sharp, rusty spikes instead of polished, round nubs. Christ almighty on a pogo stick, this is a slick album. I mean, as far as rock albums go in the grand scheme of things the production is pretty typical, but it's really weird hearing crisp, clear 4/4 drums and processed-sounding guitars especially considering that in the two years since Road Apples, grunge had supposedly come along and totally annihiliated every rock band's desire to make albums sound like that. I'm probably exaggerating for the sake of an argument, and if you were to hear this album yourself, you'd probably think "What the hell is he talking about?", but in light of the Hip's later albums the slickness sometimes really bothers me. It's not that the songs are corporate rock on the level of Starship or R.E.O. Speedwagon, it's more that the spotless production happens to be applied to a set of great songs that would benefit so much more from a bit of a rougher approach. Sandpaper, not linoleum. Dirty, scuzzy sandpaper, the stuff that Tom Waits accidentally used as sandwich bread back in 1972 and unexpectedly enjoyed it so much that he hasn't used actual bread ever since.
Whatever the case, the production is the only real point of bitchiness I have with the album, besides maybe the cover, since the songs are generally first rate. The classics (once again, as far as my muddled Yank perspective can interpret) are the anthem "Courage" and the rolling, tension-building title track, both absolutely fantastic songs, and as far as I'm aware "At The Hundredth Meridian," holstered with fast-paced stream-of-consciousness verse sections, has been a concert mainstay since even before it was written. "Fifty-Mission Cap" is probably the best argument for the marked improvement in the band's songwriting, since stylistically it's pretty much the same song as "Highway Girl," but this one actually deserves to be a Hip classic, with an energetic, boisterous musical delivery and a "Dream Police"-esque chorus, both of which are almost too good for words, even though I'm using words to describe them but let's forget that fact for a second and pretend that I'm not a cliche-using lame parody of a wordsmith. This song am real well, good says me
The band at this point had gotten a little better at crafting generic rockers so that they don't sound generic, a talent that would completely follow through on the next album but rears its yummy little head here. "Looking For A Place To Happen," "The Wherewithal," "Lionized"....... how could a song possibly be bad when it begins with a line like "Cold wind blows over your private parts"? If you can answer that question, E-mail me about it, because I'd sure as hell like to know. The ballads aren't bad too and "Pigeon Camera" is a great little tune, bearing the distinction of using the word "boring" in the chorus without actually being boring itself, a nice little slice of half-irony. I have to admit that I don't find the very similar "Wheat Kings" to be terribly interesting, though something which would undoubtedly attract the ire of the band's acoustic-balladry-loving fans if more than ten people actually read this site. As it is, I'm safe!
I haven't really outwardly, openly dissed any of the songs on this album, but I just can't give it an extremely high grade since the aforementioned production sort of bugs me. Imagine if George Martin, seeking money for coke and whores in his autumn years, decided to remaster and rerelease A Hard Day's Night, only this time the drums were really clear and upfront in the mix and all of Lennon's and Harrison's guitar parts were replaced by identical but completely soulless approximations played by flashy studio wizards. This doesn't really sound like that at all, but pretend that my analogy's true anyway. It's a great set of songs, but just a bit cleanly-produced for my particular tastes.
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(reviewed by Rich Bunnell)
I realize that by backhandedly half-slamming the Hip's early career so far, I've been slowly alienating roughly 90% of their fanbase, but I'm hoping that my opinion on this particular album will serve as an olive branch to reestablish my standing as a human being in these peoples' eyes. Once again I pull out my Magical Bag of Uninformed Canadian Pop Culture Inferences and assume that this is roughly where the Hip's popularity began to take a small slide in the Land Not Down Under, and based on my first listen I would've agreed with the mainstream - I thought it was dull, slow and, in light of its immense popularity amongst fans, overrated. It's really grown on me since then, though. In fact, no Hip album has come close to occupying my CD player more than this one - whereas what you see is what you get with pretty much everything else they've ever released, the replay value for this album is astonishing. Even after that offsetting first listen, where I boredly laid on the ground with headphones at my friend's house down in Los Angeles right after buying the album, hearing the slow, clomping echoey drumbeat that opened "Grace, Too" and thinking "Oh geeze, what have I gotten myself into," there was still something about it that drew me back to it over and over again. Maybe I wanted to figure out exactly why the hell fans loved it so much. Maybe I was in need of some much-desired subtlety after the catchy but dumb material on Phantom Power (the only other Hip album I owned at that point). Who knows.
Whatever the case, this is, at the moment and what I assume to be forever since it's held this position for a good couple years now, my favorite Hip album. They've totally cast off the production gloss that slicked up their last three full-lengths almost beyond repair, and replaced it with a murky, distant, scuzzy sound that's just absolutely flat-out perfect for this time of music. Generic rockers, and there are a good share of them on here, are rendered completely ungeneric by the dark, unrelenting tone of the music - even after hearing it ten times, I still can't quite tell you exactly what the melody to "Daredevil" is, but it's still one of my favorite songs on the album. The exact same and more could be said for the charging, wall-like single "Nautical Disaster," a miniature epic that still manages to rival Titanic in its musical scope, only it lacks the involvement of Leonardo DiCaprio and manages to make its point in five minutes instead of three hours so it wins out in the long run. I can hardly imagine a snarling song like "Fire In The Hole" with Fully Completely-style production......it just can't happen. Which is kind of funny, because I recall an early draft I did of a Tragically Hip page back when I actually wrote pages for Mark Prindle's site, where I gave this album a 7, called it overrated and singled out that song as one that would benefit from shiny, full production values. I also listened to Heart back then. Late-period poodle-rock Heart. Now let us never speak of them again.
In case it sounds like I'm falling victim to empty fanboy raving, let me clarify that this isn't a masterpiece or anything. It's just a solid and consistent album with a lot of songs that are either well-written and surprisingly original for rock songs ("Greasy Jungle" comes to mind) or hard-hitting enough that their flaws don't really seep through. "Grace, Too," which I mentioned earlier, even if it originally aided in my initial disappointment with the album, is just a fantastic, sprawling opener, and if they've done a single concert since this album's release which hasn't opened with it, I'll be really, really surprised to find that out. Also, some of these hooks are so weird that they just floor me - "An inch an hour, two feet a day".....hey, he's right! Mathematically correct and killer at the same time, that's quite a feat. "Did you have to beat the death of inevitability to death just a little bit?" Quite a catchy little tongue-twister if you ask me, even if the line really doesn't make very much sense (but hey, that's Gordie for you). "Impossibilium" is a cool enough song title as it is, but the fact that they craft a memorable vocal hook out of "Can you spare some change, dear?" both befuddles and awes me at the same time, and the song rocks pretty hard to boot.
This is great stuff - ragged, hard-rocking, substantive, pretty much everything that a good rock album really needs to be, as long as you're not bothered by Downie's voice. I won't give it a perfect score since I honestly don't think that it's a perfect album - but it's still a work of a certain coherency and musical vision that hadn't been hinted at before by the band and hasn't been lived up to since. Just a bit of weird trivia: they promoted this album by appearing on Saturday Night Live! Seems that fellow Canuck Dan Aykroyd pulled some strings and got one of his favorite bands onto the show, a welcome addition seeing that the rest of it probably consisted of Chris Farley running his Matt Foley character into the ground for the ten millionth time. Did you know that he lives in a van, and the van's down by the river? Well la-dee-frickin-da.
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COMMENTS
[email protected] (Daniel Bader)
Nautical disaster is about the Canadian WWII attmepted and failed landing at the beach of Dieppe.
(reviewed by Rich Bunnell)
My mission in life is not to establish solidarity with the fans of the bands that I love. I'll enjoy the albums that I enjoy, not the ones that'll get me first bong rights at nonexistent Hip fan reefer parties. This album is the "misstep," the album that every band makes when they feel they've hit their artistic peak, the one where they rehash the previous album's sound with stronger production values and more generic and hackneyed songwriting. It's their Living In The Material World. Their King For A Day... Fool For A Lifetime. Their Madonna's Greatest Hits, Volume 2. The album that's just a footnote in a catalogue which is already pretty much ignored by the music press outside of that incredibly large country where only about twelve people live in total because 85% of it is too cold. Even the fans on the Hip newsgroup don't seem to like it, and considering what a hotbed of obsessive fanatical raving that wasteland known as Usenet is, particularly when it comes to music newsgroups, it is a mean, mean feat when negative opinion manages to be rallied in a manner like that.
Well, screw me if I'm totally out of my element, but I love this album. Well....love is a strong word that I usually reserve for albums like Abbey Road or movies like The Wizard, so let me just say that I'm solidly fond of it. The slapshod production values which defined Day For Night are still hanging around, except the band is given a little bit more muscle in the mix in a way that makes the music sound full rather than annoyingly glossy and anonymous. It's more of a straightforward and pedestrian rock album in comparison to the often original and sprawling stuff which was so prevalent the last time 'round, and some of the songs kind of recall the genericisms of the debut EP. In 1989, Tom Petty wrote "The Apartment Song," which would go on to become the most formulaic song on his Full Moon Fever album, and seemingly as some sort of tribute to the man, the Hip did the exact same thing on this album with a song of the same title. It's a testament to how many times I've listened to this album that I can even remember how it goes at all, but if you think I'm going to try to transcribe it in words, you're goddamn crazy.
I'm willing to admit that pretty much all of the stronger songs are on the first half of the album, since the second half contains such amazing wonders of songwriting as a song with the title "Butts Wigglin'" and an annoyingly-blatant ode to spam javelin-greasing called "Coconut Cream"(think about it). What a great first half, though! A lot of bands would kill for a spacey slow build that works as well as the one on "Gift Shop," and "Ahead By A Century"..... oh man if that is not just the most flat-out wonderful little acoustic piece of majesty ever written, excepting all of the other great acoustic songs that I'm not letting myself think about at the moment because I've got Hip on the brain. "Springtime In Vienna"? Tension defined. "700 Ft. Ceiling"? Tension defined, only twice as fast and with more guitars. "Don't Wake Daddy"? Tension defined, plus gui......crimony, I'm really running out of descriptive phrases here. Look happy and pretend that every sentence I speak is totally original, and everything will be okay.
To be honest, I don't really like any of the other songs I didn't name. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, the entire second half of this album can fall into a vat of maple syrup to be fossilized and brought back in genetically-reanimated dinosaur form 65 million years later. I am not even close to being able to remember the melodies to "Let's Stay Engaged" or "Sherpa," and I probably never will. I'm still really fond of the album as an album though, and that first half is so unbelievably strong and full of great rock hooks that I'm willing to give it a much higher grade than I would give to any given Sting album. And I've heard almost every single one of them. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Hell.
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(reviewed by Rich Bunnell)
I took a stab in the dark and made this album my introduction to the Hip through this album when, during my days as a young chat dork on IRC, the subject of music came up and some Canadian person in the chat mentioned the Tragically Hip. I asked who that was, and was met with the reply "Stupid Tragically Hip-less Americans." I knew a challenge when was met with one, and the next thing I knew, I was waltzing down to the local overpriced Media Play and buying a spankin' new copy of the band's as-of-yet-latest album. Then I found out that this person in the chatroom didn't even really like the Hip. This incident disillusioned me to the dishonesty that characterizes the information superhighway, and I have not used the internet ever since.
I give this album credit for getting me into the band in the first place, but taken on its own it's kind of a simple-minded, fragmented step back from the last couple of albums. The melodies and arrangements often border on super-obvious, not the least of which is the enjoyable but dumbassed shout-along lead single "Poets," which is basically the exact same song as the Stones' "Gimme Shelter." Song for song, the tunes cover more moods and textures than the consistent shifting between rockers and guitar ballads on Henhouse, but a lot of them don't really make their mark - their attempt at a wall-of-death creepy rocker ("Membership") is rendered totally annoying since for some reason they decided to take Gord's most irritating vocal performance ever and, of all things, multi-track it, and there's this expansive, lifting rock song at the end of the album called "Emperor Penguin" which seems to be trying to make some kind of profound point, but the lyrics are so oblique that the average listener will only be able to hang onto the line "Don't wipe your asses with your sleeve!" I'm not joking, they use that line in a slow-building rock song.
Otherwise, it's a pretty decent album, containing probably the most enjoyable song the band has ever written ("Fireworks," a distinctly-Canadian narrative allegory between love and hockey), a wonderfully sly little walking bass number ("Vapour Trails," of no relation to the Rush album of the same name), a couple of solid riff-rockers ("Something On" and "Save The Planet," which succeeds despite rhyming "incredible" with "edible," something they inexplicably do twice on the album) and a humble little low-key number called "Bobcaygeon" which I'm naming as part of the sentence because if I put it in parentheses like I did to the other songs, technically the sentence wouldn't contain any song titles in it since parentheses are supposed to be used as an afterthought rather than an integral part of the statement.
One of these days I'm going to write a review where I don't fill up space by critiquing my own writing style. One of these days I'm going to write a review where I don't fill up space by pointing out that I'm filling up space. That day has not yet come, however, as I am filling up my time with my never-ending quest to seek out the perfect album, a title which this decent but flawed album by the Tragically Hip could not even dream of obtaining. The album cover's pretty neat, though - it's one of those little cardboard open-flap things. I love those!!!
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(reviewed by Rich Bunnell)
The album cover is a splotchy mess and the title is an unfortunate remnant from the same era of irritating Information Age mainstreaming that resulted in album titles like Jethro Tull's j-tull.com, but luckily the actual music itself shows a refreshing return to basics for the band (which, for the Hip, is pretty redundant, but it still holds true). I admittedly didn't like it very much at first, mostly because whereas on the older albums Downie's lyrical weirdness just popped up every now and then with a "what the hell?" line here or there, on this album he goes completely nuts, wallpapering the songs with lines like "Had a bird's eye view of a bird's eye view," "If there's danger in the language, gentlemen, I suggest no further use of the two-way radio" and "Sharks don't attack the Irish -- it's mostly Australians." On top of all that, the band had the audacity to make perhaps the worst song they've ever recorded, the rambling, tuneless John Cage tribute "Tiger The Lion," of all things, the second song on the album. Needless to say, it doesn't leave very much of a good first impression.
The upside is that, with the exception of the usual genericisms here or there, the songs are actually mostly really strong and solidly-written, as difficult as they are to notice at first underneath the more obvious chaff. In fact, this is probably the first album they've done since their dramatic shift in sound following Fully Completely where they've been able to find a musical niche and stick with it as opposed to bouncing from sound to sound over the course of twelve songs, and the material benefits all the more from it. Great songs abound - "My Music At Work" is anthemic rock at its best, the type of song that everyone thinks they can write but when the time actually comes to sit down and do it, it turns out to be a lot harder than it originally seemed. Gord paraphrases a line from Michael Jackson's "The Girl Is Mine" in the shuffling "Stay," which turns out to be far, far above the level of that painful McCartney duet, and "The Bastard" matches a snarling guitar tone with a relentless bongo backing, of all things, and on top of all that it's called "The Bastard" so it can't possibly be a bad song.
Besides that, there aren't any real musical peaks, which is part of what turned me off at first, but aside from "Tiger The Lion" the songs aren't of the type that either hit you as unmistakably terrible or of the type that become worse with each successive listen. The only other song which I don't particularly care for myself is the awkward "Wild Mountain Honey," which isn't nearly as pretty as the surprisingly-decent Steve Miller hit of the same name. Otherwise, "Freak Turbulence" and "Puttin' Down" rock convincingly enough that it doesn't matter that they do little else and "The Bear" and the single "Lake Fever" are chimers of a higher order. A lot of people view this one as one of the band's lesser releases, and with an album cover like that I don't blame them, but it's easily their second or third best overall and it wouldn't bother me at all if they continued down this path for the rest of their musical existence.
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COMMENTS
The album cover and title is pretty bad... and it took me a few listens to get into this one also. Produced by Steve Berlin (saxophone playerfor Los Lobos), this sound is remeniscent of Fully Completely. I must be the only one who likes "Tiger the Lion", and My Music at Work, The Bear and Freak Turbulence are first-rate. The rest are good-to-ok. I wouldn't put this in my top three, as I like the Road Apples through Phantom Power albums much better.
(reviewed by Rich Bunnell)
I fully realize that, at least as far as this site's American readers are concerned, I'm pretty much writing this set of reviews for my own entertainment. I don't ever actually actively recommend the Tragically Hip to people like I do some of my other favorite bands, since the chances of their being shoved back into my face as "nothing special" are pretty high. I don't even think I like them for the right reasons - their fans back in Canada seem to love them for their unique Canuck mystique, their shadowy concert presence and a number of things that I'm bound not to recognize, what with me being a superficial Yank and all. I just enjoy their albums because I find their songs catchy and gripping, no matter how unwilling they are to stray from any pre-established boundaries of rock music. They churn out an album of kicking rock songs and slow-burning ballads every two years, I buy it, I enjoy it, I never actually mention it to anybody. I say all this not only because I'm trying to fill up space with a funnel introduction ala sophomore year English class, but also because without explaining myself like that, it wouldn't be clear at all exactly why I was driven to buy this particular album.
This album is a crinkly page right out of a battered copy of Cliff's Notes on how to write Hip songs. This isn't to say that it's bad, but it's pretty much the same thing they've been doing for the last several years, only with fewer earth-shattering classics than ever to anchor it all and actually provide a reason to recommend it to anyone. I know that I praised Trouble At The Henhouse, usually tossed off as a disaster by fans and critics, for being a solid collection of gritty rock songs, but really, the fourth time around it's getting pretty old. Elton John ubercollaborator Gus Dudgeon sat in as producer, but it's not really very noticeable unless you listen to this album and the last one side-by-side, song-for-song - Dudgeon's trademark smooth sheen probably wasn't very applicable to the type of material the band had ready, so he probably just kinda twiddled the knobs like a normal producer would, fully knowledgeable of the fact that this album was going to sell about five copies outside of the Great White North. So for anyone who's waiting for the Hip equivalent of "Someone Saved My Life Tonight," keep waiting.
I'm not saying that any of these songs are bad -- in fact, none of them are bad at all -- but none of them really leap out like a "My Music At Work"(or as Nick would put it, "My Work At Home") or a "Courage." I unabashedly enjoy all of the first four songs on the album, actually one of the overall stronger stretches of music on any Hip album. The opener "Are You Ready" has a central riff that is thoroughly original due to its lame, clumsy awkwardness, but the drive of the song manages to overpower it, and "Use It Up" is a tribute to the greatness that is music, centered around a soaring "There's music that can take you away" chorus and sly references to Bruce Springsteen and Randy Newman. The next two songs are even better - "The Darkest One" is cut straight from the Hip's set of blueprints for a good, tense rock song, with a chorus that develops in a really gripping manner, and "It's A Good Life If You Don't Weaken" has to be one of their least obvious and most daring choices for a leadoff single ever, with a slow-burning atmosphere that makes the song sound average at first but gradually reveals it to be probably the strongest song on the album.
Otherwise, it's just the same ol' Hip that we know, we love, and we're really starting to get bored by. Haven't they already written "Throwing Off Glass" already? Yeah, I enjoyed it last time, when it was called "Flamenco." The intro to "All Tore Up" is kinda cool, with a slow, bouncy guitar part suddenly getting carried off by a kicking 4/4 beat, but the song is just your basic, by-the-book riff-rocker once the novelty wears off. And as much as I think it's cool that the band finally went out and named a song "The Dark Canuck," aside from a neat change in musical pace midway through the six-minute song, it's not really any great shakes. These are alright compositions, I guess, but as songs on a Hip album they're really beginning to sound formulaic. I know that the last time around I said that it wouldn't bother me at all if the band continued down the same path they were already traveling on Music@Work, but they can't just rehash the sound of their older albums - they have to come up with the classic Hip hooks in spades to keep me interested and entertained. They dunt do that here.
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COMMENTS
I like the production on here better than M@W. It's closer in feel to Phantom Power, one of my favorite TH records. That being said, I agree with what's being said here. These songs are not bad, but there's no standout tunes on here like there are on the other albums. These are good, solid rock and roll songs, but I think the melodies and quirkiness is lacking here. In the past, Hip songs appeared to be straight-forward, but closer inspection revealed hidden gems. On this one, the songs are as straight-forward as they seem. I do like the change-of-pace direction in "The Dark Canuck", though.
[email protected] (Jeff Schnurr)
I haven’t read through your site in FULL yet only a brief look. Interesting reviews from the few sentences I read. I really only looked at the numbers/ratings. I can tell you this…. You are way off IMO with throwing a 6 at IVL. When I have time I look forward to reading all of the reviews on each Hip CD. I just got back from the Silver Jet video Shoot, have over 45 shows under my belt & about 11 years of listening to the Band.
Talk to you soon