New York Press – JON LANGSTON – Hip Check
The biggest band in Canada is not from Montreal
By Jon Langston

Canada’s favorite band doesn’t garner four-star reviews in Rolling Stone. They get no fawning fluff jobs in indie rags, no name checks at cooler-than-thou music websites. No, the biggest band in Canada is not some quirky-cute hipster collective from Montreal (neither is it an aging power trio that admirably churns out albums year after year). It’s a quintet called The Tragically Hip, and they’ve just released their 11th album, World Container, which was produced by veteran twiddler (and fellow Canadian) Bob Rock and is a welcome return to form.

The Tragically Hip’s early sound, bluesy and tinged with twang, was an immediate hit up north. By the early ’90s, the band had matured sonically into a more polished rock that maintained its wry lyrical hues, and The Hip endured a groundswell of popularity, cementing their status as Canada’s favorite sons. To date, they’ve sold more than six million albums worldwide, have won more Juno awards (Canada’s Grammys) than anyone ever and have been inducted into the Canadian Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They routinely sell out arenas from Vancouver to Halifax. But The Hip, which still boasts its five original members—vocalist Gordon Downie, guitarists Rob Baker and Paul Langlois, bassist Gord Sinclair and drummer Johnny Fay—have never ventured past cult status in the U.S. And after 25 years together, they’re just fine with that.

“Something as mundane as ‘breaking’ in the States is certainly not an ambition of ours at this point in our career,” says Downie. (Indeed, on playing the SXSW Festival earlier this year, Downie said the band felt decidedly un-hip: “That slouch,” he says with a laugh, “comes straight out of some manual that I sure didn’t get.”) When touring America the band plays smaller, midsized venues, and Downie admits that he and his mates relish the intimate challenge.

“When you’ve been doing this as long as we have, you take a certain amount of pride in being able to play anywhere, at any time—on the ass of an elephant, if need be,” says Downie. The Hip’s live shows are legendary in Canada; the band’s versatility and Downie’s onstage antics and peculiar banter make every performance distinctive. The band squelched a black market early on by allowing the recording of its shows; the Internet is rife with fans’ dubs, which these days include numerous digi-vid files as well as audio clips. The band embraces the new technology and Downie, for one, doesn’t mind the effect downloading has had on the music business.

“I don’t lament it or despair for the industry,” he explains. “I’ve always felt that rock ’n’ roll is just melodious air. I get perplexed when music gets blunted at the border by some artificial demarcation line—whether a corporate border or a technological one. Music, or any kind of art, is like water, and it needs to be able to find its way. Fifteen years ago, we would have needed a licensing deal, some kind of emissary to chaperone our music into the same kinds of places that it’s getting to naturally these days. It’s fluid; it’s just doing what it should be doing.”

As for the recent popularity of Canadian bands such as Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene, Downie understands the appeal. “Those bands are exuding exuberance and enthusiasm,” he says. “People want authentic, organic music these days. As the old model of the music industry shrinks daily, there’s so much more room to make it up. And given the opportunity to make it up, what do you do? You speak from the heart. Kids want to hear the sound of guitars going through amps. They’re sick to death of being virtualized.”
April 24-25, Fillmore NY at Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Pl. (at 15th St.), 212-777-1224; 9, $25 (SOLD OUT).

New Jersey Record

Friday, April 20, 2007
By MIKE KERWICK
STAFF WRITER

Mug shots, he confides. Gord Sinclair is getting mug shots taken.

Sinclair is not at a police station. And he doesn’t really mean mug shots. He is busy posing for ID photos for The Tragically Hip’s upcoming trip to the Cayman Islands.

If you do not recognize the face in the photos, don’t be alarmed. Most Americans wouldn’t. The Tragically Hip (or simply “The Hip,” as they’ve come to be known) have always had far more popularity north of the border.

“It was a little mysterious when we were around our second, third or fourth record,” Sinclair said during a recent phone interview. “We were still with Universal at the time, MCA in the States. They were pulling out a lot of stops, trying to run us up the media flagpole. It never seemed to take off. You kind of learn not to get frustrated with it. The road is littered with media casualties.”

The Kingston, Ontario-based band is not one of those casualties.

Stars up there, familiar down here, The Hip are popping by for two sold-out shows at Fillmore New York at Irving Plaza on Tuesday and Wednesday. The group’s new album, “World Container,” is a socially conscious offering, but Sinclair doesn’t think it’s any more socially aware than previous Hip albums.

“I think there’s always been a social consciousness to what [Hip frontman Gordon Downie] writes,” Sinclair, the band’s bassist, said. “Over the last three or four years, if you weren’t aware of your relationship to where you live and your planet and your environment and who you are, you certainly would be now. It’s become such a huge concern for everybody that, God, even politicians are beginning to talk about it.”

No song personifies that ideal more than the title track, the final song on the album.

There’s a world container with your name on it

And a billion ways to go berserk

When the country quits on you it must be dinner

And the Himmler on this one is there’s no dessert

(He’s the one who couldn’t imagine all the people living life in peace).

“It’s actually one of my favorite songs to play live now,” Sinclair said. “We ended up using the title of the song as the title of the record because it encapsulated loose themes that [are] running [through the album].”

Reaching for a singular theme that connects the 11 tracks, Sinclair zeroes in on love.

“When it comes time to start writing for a record,” Sinclair said, “we literally sit around in a circle, and take turns throwing out ideas.”

What they came up with this time around was an album of love and maturity, an album tweaked by former Metallica producer Bob Rock.

It is an album Canadians love, an album some Americans love, too.

Copyright © 2007 North Jersey Media Group Inc.

Tragically Hip returns for two sold-out shows

Published: Monday, April 16, 2007
By Brent Hallenbeck
Free Press Staff Writer

Why is it, Gord Sinclair, that The Tragically Hip is so popular around these parts?

“It’s a credit to the good taste of the people of Burlington,” according to the band’s bass player. That was his half-joking response. His serious answer attributes the Canadian rock band’s tendency to play sold-out shows in Vermont — as it’s doing tonight and Tuesday at Higher Ground — to a mix of geography and adventurousness.

The geography relates to the band’s roots in Kingston, Ontario, which, Sinclair pointed out, is about 20 kilometers (that’s a little more than a dozen miles to us metrically challenged Americans) from Watertown, N.Y., placing The Tragically Hip’s home base closer to a host of U.S. burgs than to Canadian cities such as Vancouver. When the band’s vocalist, Gordon Downie, sings about intrigue on the ice on “The Lonely End of the Rink” from the new Hip album “World Container,” fans in hockey-absorbed communities like Burlington just nod at their neighbors to the north and say, “I hear ya.”

Sinclair, speaking recently by phone during a tour stop in Seattle, also suspects the Vermont way of thinking has something to do with his band being a consistently big draw here. “Generally speaking, people in your neck of the woods are more open-minded to things that are not from America,” he said, nothing that local fans also seem more accepting of music that’s not spoon-fed to them by radio. “We’ve never had the benefit of a stateside single. With a group like ours, all you have to do is get us in front of people.”

That live show Sinclair referred to is The Tragically Hip’s trademark. Downie’s dervish-like persona and the band’s musical intensity in a live setting are legendary, even if they haven’t always transferred that power into the studio.

They come close with “World Container,” the 12th Tragically Hip album. The band leaned on producer Bob Rock, known for his work with hard rockers Metallica and Motley Crue and not so much with anthemic pop-rockers like The Tragically Hip.

“What he brought to us was a real focus on each individual song,” according to Sinclair. Rock helped refine the arrangement of “The Lonely End of the Rink,” Sinclair said, turning the track into a Who/U2/Midnight Oil-styled rampage that’s one of the disc’s highlights. His contributions weren’t all about frenzied moments, though; Sinclair said Rock also steered the band toward an elegant piano texture on the track “Pretend.”

“He just has a really focused ear,” Sinclair said. “He became the ersatz sixth member of the group.”

Speaking of The Who, an obvious influence on the band, The Tragically Hip recently played several opening dates for the legendary British rockers. The Tragically Hip has been around more than 20 years and the band members are in their 40s, but they still feel a rush of teenage hero worship around Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend.

“It’s impossible to divorce yourself from when you’re 15 years old,” Sinclair said. “We grew up with that group.

“Opportunities like that make you a better band. You have to get up and you have to entertain these rabid Who fans,” according to Sinclair. “In terms of a dream come true, that’s right up there.”

The Tragically Hip might be aiming toward a little of their own Who-like longevity. It’s already rare for a band to have the same five members it started out with more than two decades earlier. Sinclair said there are moments when they get together after time away and find themselves saying, “How can we do this again?” Yet they always manage.

“We’ve grown up together, put the band together as young men doing this. It’s based around our friendship and the bond we have as a group. It’s a collective experience, a shared experience,” Sinclair said.

“It is a lifelong bond.”

Contact Brent Hallenbeck at 660-1844 or bhallenb@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com