Getting my review in early as I'll be away next week.
Day for Night – The Tragically Hip
Before I started listening to this album, I had a good feeling about it. Why? Because as is often the case, I had a quick read about the album and noticed a few interesting facts, all of which can be summed up by: “Wow! This album has a link to Chris Whitley’s
Living With The Law.”
The first thing I noticed was that one of the recording locations for
Day for Night was Daniel Lanois’ fabled Kingsway Studios in New Orleans. Secondly, it was produced by Mancunian Mark Howard – engineer on Chris Whitley’s album. Finally, I read a review that mentioned that the album had a Lanoisesque sound.
As the opening track, “Grace, Too”, floats by, you can hear all of this – the bass, the sounds, the space between the sounds – I loved this song. “Daredevil” definitely has that gauzy production feel, but the bass and particularly the squally guitar break out of that to fine effect. “Greasy Jungle” starts with a bluesy guitar lick, and whilst most of the track is dominated by Gordon Downie’s vocal, the guitar gets an extended workout at the end.
The instruments are so minimal at the start of “Yawning Or Snarling” that you can’t help but get drawn into the vocal and the words but the band sound builds nicely as the song progresses. There are a few tracks in the middle that get the album bogged down a little but the last four tracks are all superb.
What I liked about this album was that there was plenty of energy – this is definitely a
@southamptonblue album – helped by the squalling guitar and the number of times there was not so much a change of pace, but spaces in the music where the instruments were broken down to a minimum and built back up again (e.g. the bass in the middle section of “Yawning Or Snarling”).
It’s funny that Black&White&BlueMoon Town thought that this was going to be Midnight Oil because I’m definitely getting some Oils vibes from this album, mixed with a little mid-period R.E.M. The vocals aren’t as strident as Peter Garret and the guitars don’t rock as hard as early Oils (although they are getting there on tracks like “Emergency” and “An Inch An Hour” and lyrically on “Titanic Terrarium”), but on this outing, The Tragically Hip display a terrific mix of guitars, slinkly bass and thoughtful lyrics. There was a little bit of “gauziness” in the production where I thought that the sound of the instruments could have been captured with a little more clarity, but this is a minor quibble because on the whole, I did like the sound so it’s an
8/10.
After this album, I went straight on to
Road Apples and it’s similarly gnarly, explosive and superb. Clearly a band I have missed out on.
