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Album Review: Gord Downie and The Country of Miracles ~ The Grand BouncePosted
by lmelvin
August - 14 - 2010
Written by: Laura Melvin

That so called review was weak, and what was the point of posting it on this board, really? Sounds like an uninspired person that listens, or even skims through material quickly in an effort to crank out as much self-indulgent/important dribble as possible, without really spending any of the time it takes to understand and appreciate the material.

Try a second listen. :music

Laura Melvin's certainly not the "girl in the grass". I checked out her other reviews — we don't share similar tastes.

Judging by the tone of that review, she can't be a professional music critic, can she?

This weeks Starbucks free Pick of the Week is:
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Tthip Wrote:This weeks Starbucks free Pick of the Week is:
[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]

As A Mover has always been one of my favourites from Grand Bounce. I was disappointed that the band was so quick to drop it from their setlists. I was lucky enough to hear it at Niagara Falls and thought it sounded great. I guess the band felt it never translated well live.

The Grand Bounce has been nominated for an XM Satellite Radio Verge Music Award.
To Vote: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.thevergeonline.com/vma_vote.php">http://www.thevergeonline.com/vma_vote.php</a><!-- m -->

Gord Downie and the Country of Miracles, "The Grand Bounce" has been nominated for CBC Radio 2's Top 10 Canadian Albums of 2010.
Vote: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.cbc.ca/radio2/programs/2010/12/rtwoten.html">http://www.cbc.ca/radio2/programs/2010/12/rtwoten.html</a><!-- m -->

At least the vinyl version of The Grand Bounce will be released in the USA on March 22.
I am not sure if it is the same pressing as the Canadian release.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.amazon.com/Grand-Bounce-Gord-Downie/dp/B004JOBTKS/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1297525155&sr=1-1">http://www.amazon.com/Grand-Bounce-Gord ... 155&sr=1-1</a><!-- m -->
The Grand bounce will be released in the USA on Tuesday, February 15.
The label is Cobraside, an "indie" label that I believe does not really reproduce the albums, but just redistributes them for domestic release.
I also believe that the vinyl version will be available in March (22?) in the USA on the same label.

Unlike Coke Machine glow that had alternate CD art with its USA release, these releases, I believe, are identical.

It took almost a year - but The Grand Bounce was released this week in the US iTunes store.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/138455-gord-downie-and-the-country-of-miracles-the-grand-bounce/">http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/138 ... nd-bounce/</a><!-- m -->

Gord Downie and the Country of Miracles : The Grand Bounce

By Ross Langager 20 May 2011

On his first two solo albums, singer, songwriter, poet, and all-around Canadian Renaissance man Gord Downie broadened his artistic horizons while burnishing an indie credibility that casual observers didn’t even know he had. Moonlighting from his main gig as frontman of the Tragically Hip, Downie crafted complex and ambiguous pop songs with scope and poignancy. There was not a firm delineative boundary between Downie’s solo work and the Hip’s output, mind you; his initial effort, 2001’s bizarrely elegant Coke Machine Glow, was composed of leftfield variations on the musical tones and themes that made up 2000’s Music @ Work, the Hip’s most indie-friendly LP from a production standpoint. Even 2003’s much weaker Battle of the Nudes, for all of its slam-poet excess, shared numerous elements with Downie’s writing for his more famous band.

Once again collaborating with a hinterland who’s who of his Canuck contemporaries (namely Dale Morningstar and Dave Clark of the Dinner Is Ruined, Josh Finlayson of the Skydiggers, and former Eric’s Trip member and longtime solo artist Julie Doiron) and produced by Death Cab for Cutie guitarist Chris Walla, Downie’s third solo recording, The Grand Bounce, retains the indie rock-poet aesthetic of its predecessors while splicing in a measure of arena-sized muscle borrowed from his daytime gig.

The latter is especially palpable, and gloriously so, on the album-opening surges of “The East Wind”. A favorite literary image of impending chaos and upheaval from the Greek poets down to Conan Doyle and Tolkien, Downie deepens the title phrase’s inherent menace with references to the Canadian poets Todd Burley and Al Purdy (the latter’s beer-soaked existentialism has long been a touchstone for Downie, who narrated and starred in Douglas Bensadoun’s short film based on Purdy’s “At the Quinte Hotel” in 2002). There’s also an inverted invocation of Canadian painter Tom Thomson’s famed The West Wind in the title, if you want to parse it (Downie is also a painter, and one of his works graces the album cover). The embedding of all of these elements into a four-and-a-half-minute rock song that soars on crescendoing strums and Downie’s harmonizing with Doiron (a noteworthy complementary star on the record) is a statement to the depth and breadth of his craft.

The stabbing rhythm of “The East Wind” recurs frequently throughout the rest of the album, eventually constituting a half-formed leitmotif of sorts. It drives the growling, gothic “The Dance and Its Disappearance”, underscores the nautical disaster metaphors of “The Drowning Machine”, and revs up the desperate nocturnal momentum of “Night Is for Getting”.

But The Grand Bounce is hardly all restless relentlessness; Downie and the Country of Miracles make the time for tweetering indie-rock shuffles like “Retrace”, “Moon Over Glenora”, and “Moonslow Yer Lashes” (Downie has an evident lunar predilection). Even more indelible are songs like “As a Mover” and “Gone”, wherein Downie’s underrated melodies climb almost imperceptively to majestic heights. That formidable melodic sense can sometimes let him down, though. “Broadcast” misplaces expressions of the haunting vastness of the Great Lakes in a meandering off-path journey with little effect (or affect), and the album’s coda “Pinned” is an unintelligible piano-plinking whisper of grief.

Furthermore, I’m still struggling over what exactly to make of “The Hard Canadian”. The instrumental backing is uninspired and the melody is wedged between predictability and ironic recycling, but the lyric sheet reveals Downie facing up to the pitfalls of the hard-bitten rural proletarian mode of expression that he is clearly attracted to and fitfully embraces. He’ll sing about the isolation, the obtuseness, and the misanthropy of such a figure with the apparent detachment of the omniscient narrator, but is he implicating himself when he wonders if “The Hard Canadian” is “just mean or willfully dense”? Where in this stark landscape does our Renaissance man stand? You never really know with Gord Downie, and you should never really expect to. That’s an integral part of the pleasure.

Rating: 8/10

So is Moonslow Yer Lashes still the best song on this album ? :music

I must say, I sat on this album for years, my first couple of listens having found it melodically incoherent and left me indifferent to the upper-register warbling that Gord delivers on some of these songs.

Pulling it out years later - part of the general process, which I suspect a lot of us are going through, of re-exploring the Hip and Downie's catalogue in light of the tragic news - there is SO much good stuff here. Not just good stuff, but fantastic stuff. In retrospect, I think my loathing of 'Moon over Glenora,' which remains as strong as ever, coupled with the fact that 'The Dance and its Disappearance' is merely so-so, contaminated my response to the whole album. (It's always tough, for me at least, to focus past a dodgy start to a record). But 'The Hard Canadian' is wonderfully poignant, and offers a particular spin on our national character, or a national archetype, in any case; 'The Drowning Machine' is epic, classic doomsday Downie; and 'Yellow Days' is just a superb track, so different from his work with the Hip, so evocative and complex. Add to that effective songs like 'Retract,' 'The East Wind,' and 'Gone,' and you've got a critical mass of quality work. It's too bad he threw away 'Pinned' on that bizarre production, or it might have been added to the list.

It's also got the best packaging of anything he's been involved with since Fully Completely. I didn't appreciate it fully at the time, but the lyric booklet is really a sort of sequel to Coke Machine Glow (the book) - i.e., it's a little book of poems. Seems like a costly production for an album that wasn't likely to sell very well. Clearly a labour of love. I didn't know Gord could paint, either; yet he gives us a cover that is more attractive than any Hip cover since the aforementioned FC.

Silly me. I'm going to spend the next couple of weeks before the new Hip release unpacking this album's riches.

Killer Whale Tank Wrote:I must say, I sat on this album for years, my first couple of listens having found it melodically incoherent and left me indifferent to the upper-register warbling that Gord delivers on some of these songs.

Pulling it out years later - part of the general process, which I suspect a lot of us are going through, of re-exploring the Hip and Downie's catalogue in light of the tragic news - there is SO much good stuff here. Not just good stuff, but fantastic stuff. In retrospect, I think my loathing of 'Moon over Glenora,' which remains as strong as ever, coupled with the fact that 'The Dance and its Disappearance' is merely so-so, contaminated my response to the whole album. (It's always tough, for me at least, to focus past a dodgy start to a record). But 'The Hard Canadian' is wonderfully poignant, and offers a particular spin on our national character, or a national archetype, in any case; 'The Drowning Machine' is epic, classic doomsday Downie; and 'Yellow Days' is just a superb track, so different from his work with the Hip, so evocative and complex. Add to that effective songs like 'Retract,' 'The East Wind,' and 'Gone,' and you've got a critical mass of quality work. It's too bad he threw away 'Pinned' on that bizarre production, or it might have been added to the list.

It's also got the best packaging of anything he's been involved with since Fully Completely. I didn't appreciate it fully at the time, but the lyric booklet is really a sort of sequel to Coke Machine Glow (the book) - i.e., it's a little book of poems. Seems like a costly production for an album that wasn't likely to sell very well. Clearly a labour of love. I didn't know Gord could paint, either; yet he gives us a cover that is more attractive than any Hip cover since the aforementioned FC.

Silly me. I'm going to spend the next couple of weeks before the new Hip release unpacking this album's riches.

I've loved this album since day one. My personal favorites are Broadcast, Drowning Machine, Yellow Days, East Wind, and Retrace. From a purely lyrical standpoint, I think the entire record is brilliant. And you're right, the artwork and packaging are top notch. For me, the last really good album cover from the Hip was In Between Evolution, particularly the awesome fold-out painting of the five band members on the inside sleeve.

My favorite Downie solo project is the Sadies/Conquering Sun album. In my humble opinion, I think it's just as good, if not better than the last five Hip albums. But that's probably just me. Great artwork on that one as well.

I think Yellow Days might still be my favourite of Downie's songs, Hip or otherwise, since 2002.