PunBB

As I wait for the official release of MMP, I decided to give The Grand Bounce a listen. I traded in my Rock amp/speaker setup for a SET tube amp/full range speaker setup a few years ago and haven't heard this album since. Wow...like I'm HEARING this album for the first time :thumb:

Nothin gets my butt wigglin' like a little Moonslow Yer Lashes.

sean.bonner Wrote:Nothin gets my butt wigglin' like a little Moonslow Yer Lashes.

Great song...haven't listen to this album since the week I bought it :what

It appears as though the value of this on vinyl has skyrocketed within the past year...

sean.bonner Wrote:It appears as though the value of this on vinyl has skyrocketed within the past year...

I'm not sure why. It's been readily available on MapleMusic. I just ordered a copy a few weeks ago. It comes and goes. It was in stock last week, but is currently unavailable.

Just learning right now that 'High Level' is town in Northern Alberta

sean.bonner Wrote:Just learning right now that 'High Level' is town in Northern Alberta

Yep, couple hours north of where i sit . . . and also a bridge in Edmonton.

The Grand Bounce has been my go-to winter fix for Gord's music. Such a rich album. "Gone" wasn't in my top 4 on the album until recently. Now it might be my number 1. It's one of those songs that I often just put on repeat and listen to over and over again.

The imagery in the lyrics gets me every time:
"Night is dispatching savages as a furious pace..."
"Got my antlers in the thicket of a dream where you're gone..."
"As the wind inclines, the wave hit your dock, My scarf is flapping something wicked, like it's trying to talk"

Gord doing what Gord does best.

I spent most of last week obsessively listening to 'Retrace.' It's such a deceptively simple little song, but every part of it - melody, that rhythmic guitar hook, lyric - is wonderfully, effortlessly natural. It all hangs together so well. That 'naturalness' is a very important quality in a song for me, and its absence often explains why I dislike Hip tracks like 'Save the Planet.' Anyway, the key line is

I'll retrace my steps though I know we're all saying goodbye.

It slips in there at the end and somehow makes sense of everything that has gone before. I don't know exactly the people and situations he has in mind, but clearly the party and its aftermath marked a decisive moment where he realized that important relationships are doomed or disintegrating. And he has been trying to work out what went wrong ever since.

'Broadcast' has also interested me as a coda to these repeat listenings of 'Retrace.' The recording isn't as good - Gord's vocal is a little too forced for me, where the song seems to call for something gentler, less strained - and I'm not crazy about the hurrying from the chorsus into the second verse. As a composition, though, it's beautiful. One of Gord's best evocations of a single moment ('our beautiful due'...the whole scene of the Great Lake, the wind, our inheritance as residents of this place; and the moment itself also 'our due,' separate for a moment from those fourteen others inside the house, or wherever). The only thing I can't figure out is why the freighter is losing so many apples into the lake! (Originally, I thought the implication was that the ship had run aground, but I think that's much too dark for what is basically a song about peace).

I'm on a week of vacation and I've just sort of been doing stuff on my to-do list around the house. I re-listened to The Grand Bounce as I puttered around our basement today. It's wonderful. Yellow Days is one of the best things he's ever done.

Yellow Days is a stunner...and the one-two punch of 'Drowning Machine' and that song is about as good a two-fer as anything in the Hip/Downie canon. I love it when an album is anchored by two back-to-back brilliant tracks right in the heart of the playlist.

I’m a huge fan of this album. Following the news 2 years ago of Gords cancer diagnoses, this is the album I turned to. The CD was in the stereo in my car, and I listened to it practically all summer. I love the album front to back, but as KWT said the back to back of Drowning Machine & Yellow Days is stellar. This tour was also the one and only solo Downie show I saw, front row at the Moncton Casino.

Excellent album! As soon as I am ready with my net overhaul, I will definitely listen to the tracks!

Gone >> The Drowning Machine >> Yellow Days >> Night is For Getting >> Moonslow Yer Lashes >> Retrace

That is some serious listening right there. Take out Night is For Getting which is the soft spot in that run and it would be unbeatable.

In fact take out The Hard Canadian and start the run above with The Dance and Its Disappearance and you can stick a fork in me, cuz I'd be done.

work I recognize and understand,
ct

The Hard Canadian is excellent.