10/02/2012

Ludicrous Canadiana Interpretation of Now For Plan A by The Tragically Hip

[Go buy it now!]

My song by song analysis shows some overlooked connections between the meaning of the Tragically Hip's latest album, Now For Plan A, and this great land we call North of America.
  1. At Transformation: This is a rock-hard stage-melter that will put clicks on iPhones, but undulating deeper this an opaque stab at the Western Canadian shale gas fracking industry, which transforms water into money via bad-smelling gas by-products.
  2. Man Machine Poem: How did Margaret Atwood's long-distance book-signing quill change literature and the Internet as we know it? Listen to this multi-vocalic screamer and absorb.
  3. Lookahead: The fact Sarah Harmer sings on this one means it's about the Niagara Escarpment, a large landmass one can't easily look-ahead of, lest it escarp' your eyes out!
  4. We Want to Be It: The Hip have won many Juno awards, yet have never hosted the Junos. A blood-hearted romp that teases political scion Ben Mulroney about his amazing hair, as Ben 'dripped' with promise but never achieve gubernatorial transcendence.
  5. Streets Ahead: A song about love, not between a man and a woman, but a man and his dogsled team. The dog team - can he keep it together? Iditarod-know that!
  6. Now for Plan A: Since the Avro Arrow was scrapped, there have been many plans, including the current F-35 debacle, to harness the future of our skies via superior aerial war machines. Sarah Harmer returns us to our pre-Diefenbaker roots with an ode to the Arrow. Nothing short of everything will be enough to revive this long-dead Icon of aerospace. If this song were McDonald's it wouldn't be an 'all beef patty', it would be an 'All-Dief Plan A'
  7. Modern Spirit: A sinuous ear-trip along Halifax's Blowers Street, this song reminds us that the full-bodied nourishment of the stately Donair sandwich can only be appreciated with more 'modern' condiments, including the 'spirits' or harsh liqueurs once imported by the 1700s' rum trade into Dartmouth harbour. An apoplectic tromp l'oreille.
  8. About The Map: As the eruption of Nunavut's existence redrew the Canadian mapscape, a cartographer reminds his curious child about what lies 'beyond the maps' of the frozen north: a lush canticle that gets to the truth about pemmican, Northern values, and the pernicious igloo stereotypes that retard progress among our north folk.
  9. Take Forever: As singer Gord Downie flies among the skies to tour the West, he has a nervous breakdown and realizes that only Calgary's mayor, Naheed Nenshi, will grant him clearance to land. A song about a province turned away from its 'forever' values of Ralph Klein-conservatism to a swaggering stage-strut driven by good loud music that only Eastern boys like the Hip can hustle up. 'Take' that to your Stampede and lasso it.
  10. Done and Done: Inspired by the Vancouver Stanley Cup riots, this is also a song about the Hip's quest to secure better digital copyright laws for us all, as well as a stab in the face of Tony Clement's gazebo-building megalomania masked in the soft strains of a 50-year-old Bill Derlago fan's plea to finally get his way on the hockey rink.
  11. Goodnight Attawapiskat: The Hip go to Northern Ontario and build a canoe out of birch, just as Tom Thomson did. What erupted was an amazing outdoor all-night BBQ perfectly described in this emotive palette-cleanser.