"We Are The Same" - The Tragically Hip

[Canadave]

I know there are some fellow Hip fans out there, so does anyone else have it yet?

I just got it this afternoon, and am partway through (listening to "The Depression Suite" right now) and I'm really enjoying it. It's definitely a bit of a departure for them, and it seems to have a lot more of a folk influence as opposed to their usual hard\blues rock style. It's a very richly layered album, too... lots of strings, brass, piano, etc. filling out the background with the Hip's normal and awesome guitar\bass\drums in there to fill out the rest. The album has a great groove, and I have the feeling it's going to get a lot of listens from me.

Now if I can only find a way to make September come faster so I can see them play some of these...

 

[TheSeeker]

I didn't know they had a new album out. I'll have to check it out.

 

[The Great Meech]

I'm still a little mad at them for not sticking to their unofficial schedule and releasing this last year, but not so mad I didn't get the album and drop a hundred bucks on a concert ticket (the show is next month for me!)

Anyway, good album, but strange. Several songs--"Honey, Please" and "Coffee Girl" stand out--don't sound anything like a Hip song until Gord Downie starts singing. The one song that sounds like their old stuff, "Love is a First", is the one I like the least (though most of "Country Day", save for the chorus, sounds like standard Hip). There's a song cycle on here--somebody must have given the boys a Decemberists album.

Here, I think, is the best way to describe this album--imagine that Music@Work hadn't been a big lump of pretentious mediocrity. There's the same sense of an embrace of pop music mixed with heavy contemplation, but there's less of the feeling that said contemplation went nowhere (hell, it's nine years later, and I still don't know what "Putting Down" or "Toronto #4" was about.) Oh, and add a detectable 80s influence and a *horn*, and there's the album.

 

[Canadave]

^ I know what you mean. I think this album also has some shades of In Violet Light, too... really those two albums are, I think, the low point of their discography because they were trying to be very thoughtful and introspective, something they maybe weren't quite ready for at the time. But this smacks of the Hip and Downie being just a little older and wiser and more ready for this kind of album. I kind of had the feeling they'd move in this kind of direction after I first heard "In View", off World Container.

I also couldn't help but notice that Kevin Hearn, from Barenaked Ladies, played accordion and piano on the album. His own songwriting tends to be pretty introspective\mellow, so I can't help but wonder if he may have had a bit of an influence during the recording process.