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.

Buy the new Hip album or I will kill you...

(...with reminders of how extremely good it is!)

My Second Album Review: World Container
It will be written: in 2006, Gord Downie discovered melody. And heart. And Bob Rock didn't put up with overintelligent lyrical obfuscation. And the band kicked it as usual - with piano!

The Tragically Hip are the only band I'll stoop to review; here's my nonsensical track-by-track analysis of World Container - possibly the third best Hip album ever behind Road Apples and Fully Completely. It is surely Gord's best vocal performance to date.

1. Yer Not the Ocean: Gord loves nature - but hates Stephen Harper. Harper's a piddling puddle, he's no Atlantic. Look beyond politics and this is a rebuke to mankind (yes, one of those species-wide rebukes): "I'm standing on my toes" and "[you] can get out of your own way" are references to evolution. Ie for all our advances the water is still above our heads. Kim Jong Il (evolution's finest product) should listen to this one. Oceans can take only so much crap.

2. Lonely End of The Rink: Song-about-Bill-Barilko-who? Song-about-Bobby-Orr-what? This track officially replaces the national anthem, the Hockey Night in Canada theme, as well as every Tim Horton's ad in existence. A classic 'story song' for goalies, who according to GD play "the noblest position in professional sport." 'Lonely' is inspired by Gord's dad, a former travelling salesman with 5 kids who nonetheless managed to watch young Gordie play net as a kid - showing up halfway through a game, watch Gord make a few key saves, and then vanishing. All I can say is - sweet smokin shitbricks! Don't get shredded by the opening guitars.

3. In View: A love song, the antidote to Harper. Also the best song about cell phone paranoia (and call display) ever recorded. The melodies shine out for the first time; finally, a Hip song we can hum!

4. Fly: This is untapped potential, the urge to realize dreams; also about Gord finally tapping into his heart with his songwriting: "something deep inside saying - 'Where you been all my life'." Also about talented and well-educated immigrants who come to Canada and then get shafted into "pushing the broom," doing work far beneath them. The coastline of Canada beckons like 'a pair of glowing thighs' but many immigrants end up cheated. Fly fly fly. Lots of choruses. Fly 'Air-World Container', yes.

5. Luv(sic): a pun in the title! Another song about airplane sickness aka soggy puke. I mean, love. "Words I carry in my heart?" - but hadn't the courage to say, for fear of succumbing to soggy cliche. Can the Hip grapple with Cupid - without becoming... Stupid? Is Love the only virtue there is? The Hip sound convinced.

6. The Kids Don't Get It: About how hard being as awesome as the Hip is; how hard defining Canada for all the clueless Canadians is. This is about how if humans don't cut back on CO-2 emissions Ma Nature's gonna deprive us our high-horsepower engines, kick our asses back to the Paleozoic and devolve us into whiny paramecium. Er, yeah. Anyway - some quite capital screeching here!

7. Pretend: I could 'pretend' this isn't another heart-filled love song - but I'd be lying. The keyboards are a huge departure. What's next - a random rant about lovesick Killer Whales?

8. Last Night I Dreamed You Didn't Love Me: About 'old school' Hip fans who don't like the new stuff, especially departures like the previous track. Also about two minutes too long - the only song on W.C. I don't really like. The irony. Flush it down the World Container!

9. Dropoff: Some bands are afraid to experiment. The Hip are NOT such a band - and it can be scary. To experiment that is. Fans don't want change. Even Bob Dylan got/gets heckled - and he's a narrowness-bestriding colossus. Has the word 'iridescent'. Spurts of machine-gun lyrics recall '100th Meridian'. Some verses remind me of Georgian Bay. I love Ontario.

10. Family Band: holy crap - I'm hemorrhaging from my incredulous forehead. 'Family Band' is possibly the best Hip song ever. Possibly the best Hip song ever. Unfortunately... bad title. I prefer "Rock the Universe - Hardcore" or "The Day the Earth Exploded" because that's exactly what happened here. FB is an FU to Kim Jong-Il, Harper and all their jabronies, and a big thumbs up to all that's incorruptible like James Brown, Elvis Presley, shiny Lamborghinis and quality street meat (?). Climaxes with a scorching mid-song pause + hypermetal reignition which make all of 'Little Bones' seem like a stupid accident.

11. World Container: This is all Bob Rock; a complete killer-whales departure with keys and a rollercoaster melody - Gord vocal's the equivalent of a trapeze acrobat. Lyrically, I suspect it's about Kim Jong-Il or Stephen Harper -"the one who couldn't imagine all the people [Canada] living life in peace" or maybe Gord's on about fickle fans again: "The good news is that you're smaller/the bad news is you can be smaller than that." Or maybe it's about how vast the sky is. Whatever, it's instantly likeable and makes me cry. Or laugh. "Laugh and laugh till yer told 'please dont come back'." Please come back!

Down with Harper, up with bodies of water. 'Save the Planet' and don't Contain the World. Five stars!

ADD-inspired analysis of the hip’s latest

For those in the know, for those outside the know, everyone should know this: In Between Evolution is the best album to come out of the The Tragically Hip's music factory in over a decade.

Here’s my self-indulgent, moronic take on what it all means--song by miraculous song:

1. ‘Heaven is a Better Place Today’, which laments the fleeting public sympathy over the tragic death of a hockey player, a reminder that suffering is not a cliché, is a ripping, singalong show-starter… 2. ‘Summer’s Killing Us,’ is perhaps a potshot at the band’s summertime concert crowds—those notorious mapleleaf-waving morons (I'll be one of the crowd, but I won't wave a flag)--who the Hip rub elbows with like clocklock every two summers when ‘the Kingston 5’ tour to promote their wicked-ass releases… 3. ‘Gus, the Polar Bear from Central Park,’ is a grinding yarn about what happens when people no longer fear their monsters because they're caged up by civilization (stupid move, poindexter--that bear’s gonna mow on your ass!) … 4. ‘Vaccination Scar’ is a loud discordant angst-dirge that sounds very angsty and dirgelike… 5. ‘It Can’t be Nashville Every Night’-–the second of three tunes with americana in the title (perhaps this disc is meant to appeal directly to Americans—a marked change from their last 9 efforts)--is a sweet funny punchy morsel about Nashville that breathes a crazy mood I can only describe as ‘Crazy-Nashy-Crashville’… 6. ‘New Orleans is Beat’—no, the Big Easy is no longer ‘sinking’ (hahaha) but perhaps it's a bit weary--is the symbolic ‘end of side one’, the kind of lovely piece that Das Hip like sticking at the midway point of an album (‘Long Time Running’, ‘Flamenco’, ‘So Hard Done by’ anyone?)… 7. ‘You are Everywhere’: yes, friends, you are everywhere--and the Hip is out to get you. This is a scary-assed mofo of a song; when Gord Downie screams ‘when I reel my Irish in/ when I sleep on the train’ like a man possessed, then no matter where you are—here there, everywhere--or whether you’re Irish in any way, you’re going to feel it’s GAME OVER, man, cuz you just got hooked--line and sinker--on the wicked tunes! This song discusses what it’s like to be stuck in a wicked-ass, uncompromising five-piece Kingston blues-rock band for the rest of your life while also trying to begin a solo career, as Gordy has obviously done--it's difficult to escape being typecast... 8. ‘As Makeshift as we are’ is another song about writing/performing and what it’s like to have to depend on your own creations to feed you, and one day discovering that you could never live any other way--or wait, maybe that's just me… 9. ‘Mean Streak’ is probably about, I dunno, the meanness of streaking, while 10. ‘The Heart of the Melt’ sounds like an explosion of guffaws and grunts which signify the heart of inspiration, which melts the soul as often as it melts your heart (yeah, um, that's it)… 11. ‘One Night in Copenhagen’ is about a night of debauched narcotics-cum-nihilism that ends up melting all the snow in Copenhagen—heart of the ‘melt’ indeed! … 12. ‘Are we Family’ is a love letter from Gord to the rest of the band—yes they are a family, and no, families aren’t always about milk and cookies. They’re messy… 13. ‘Goodnight Josephine’ is the final track, and that’s why the word ‘goodnight’ is in the title... Boy what an album!

In conclusion: Canada’s out, America is in—the hip have declared themselves no longer Canada’s band. With titles like ‘Central Park Gus,’ ‘Nashville is Sinking’ and ‘New Orleans is Beautiful—we know which audience they’re sucking up to here. And good on ’em I say—they may finally strike the big fat yankee gold mine, and the whole world will be embiggened by their genius.

Five stars!