By BEN RAYNER
Ottawa Sun
If rock stars are an unavoidable product of late 20th-Century Western culture, we can at least
be thankful that there a couple of them like the Tragically Hip.

Few bands have made the transition from smoky clubs to stadium dates with as much class and
stalwart devotion to their art -- a fact that was hammered home yet again with last night's
thoroughly enjoyable show at the Corel Centre.

It was the first time the Hip has played a major venue in the area since its Another Roadside
Attraction festival descended on Stittsville two summers back (last spring's "surprise" gig at
Barrymore's doesn't count), and was therefore the first chance most of the 13,000 Ottawa fans at
the gig have had to hear the more difficult material on its new record, Trouble At The Henhouse,
performed live.

Any worries that the 1996 edition of the Tragically Hip wouldn't play well on the big stage were
quickly erased, though. From the moment the lights went down and the first snaky strains of
Grace, Too emanated from the star-shaped stage to the last rousing chorus of Blow At High Dough,
the centre was one huge, screaming, bouncing mass of people producing enough noise on its own to
cause permanent hearing damage.

With the perpetually evolving personality of lead singer Gordon Downie -- sporting a newly shaven
head ("I could not be a shampoo boy," he pronounced) and a new set of dance moves that give added
credence to those Michael Stipe comparisons -- at the helm, the band barrelled through a
two-hour-plus tour of its song catalogue.

Interestingly, they gave nearly equal space to some older numbers that have of late disappeared
from its set list -- Everytime You Go, Opiated, Cordelia -- and songs off its last two records,
Henhouse and Day For Night.

The tunes off Henhouse were true wonders, the products of a band at the height of its powers. A
gently grooving Springtime in Vienna and the prowling Put It Off were strong indicators, but it
was Gift Shop -- the kind of sweeping sonic epic that's one of those rare tunes that actually
feels like it should be heard in an arena -- that brought the full weight of the Hip's musical
growth over the past 12 years crashing home.

Predictably, though, it was the old standbys -- Courage, the unavoidable (though still potent)
New Orleans Is Sinking, Little Bones -- that seemed to please the assembled masses the most.
Still, it was nice to see the band stretching perennial favorites like Locked In the Trunk of a
Car and At the Hundredth Meridian into musical workouts that bordered on the mystic.

If anyone's earned the right to be rock gods, it's these guys.

Ultra-literate Toronto power-popsters the Rheostatics had the thankless task of opening up the
show to a patchy and largely indifferent crowd.

Their uncharacteristically hard-edged set of schizophrenic pop tunes was, unfortunately, reduced
to little more than a drone as the sound reverberated off acres of empty seats and the audience
treated them as little more than an obstacle on the road to the main event.

But, as the inimitable Downie put it: "The Rheostatics. If you saw them, you are richer."