More On Listening To Music: The Tragically Hip Edition

Or, “Moron Listening To Music”, if you prefer. A friend of mine paid me what I thought was a pretty nice compliment the other day. He wrote “Your opinion of an album a few days after you buy it is almost always the opinion I'll have of the album years later”. He was referring to the Hip’s album “Music @ Work”, which I thought was pretty good at the time, while he was quite disappointed with it.

So I was trying to think of why I actually liked the album. Most of the time, when I first form my opinion of an album, it’s strictly an intuitive thing. Does it have a good beat, and can I dance to it? (Aside: I tried to Google the origin of that phrase and was totally unsuccessful - anyone know?). Or more specifically, for me, does it make me invent some new stupid dance, or give me chills, or get caught in my head for days? Only after living with the album for awhile do I try to go back and articulate what it is about a song or an album that makes it work for me. This is something that’s always fun, and often surprising, in that I’ll usually realize I was completely misinterpreting a song. Or, more rewardingly, that the song had perfectly captured a moment in my life and I’d only picked up on it subconsciously at the time.

Listening to “Music @ Work” again today, there are really only four songs on it that make the album for me, and the rest is kind of forgettable. The lead track, “Music @ Work”, is just a great Hip rocker. But I think that “Lake Fever”, “Stay”, and “As I Wind Down The Pines” are some of the best things the Hip have ever done. I think what I like most about these songs is their intimacy. “Lake Fever” is basically “Bobcaygeon Part II”, which can’t be a bad thing. “Stay” is a fantastic, vulnerable love song that really captures loneliness and the need for companionship. Similarly, “As I Wind Down The Pines” is one of the few Hip songs where they manage to do more with less. Simple guitar lines and simple lyrics, but slightly out-of-sync with each other, forcing you to pay attention.

Gord Downie is always interesting as a lyricist, but I think that on the earlier albums he’s struggling a little to find his voice - trying to write big blustery “rock lyrics” without the Jagger swagger to really pull it off. And on the more recent albums, he’s descended into a bit of an obsession with words - to the detriment of the interplay between the words and the music. But on Phantom Power (unquestionably the best Hip album) and Music@Work he seems to hit a sweet spot.

And since I probably won’t write about the Hip here for a long time, if ever, my only two other strongly-held opinions about them are: (1) Gord Downie should not be allowed to play guitar live on “Wheat Kings” and “Nautical Disaster” because it absolutely murders his vocal delivery and (2) The Fully Completely / Day For Night album duo is over-rated.