06-03-2010, 11:31 AM
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Mike Doherty, National Post · Tuesday, Jun. 1, 2010
If Gord Downie didn’t exist, Canada would have to invent him. After all, who else unites such a wide spectrum of Canadians, from sensitive nature-worshippers to surly, lager-swilling brawlers? On his new solo album, The Grand Bounce, the Tragically Hip front man even sings about how the two extremes can have more in common than one may suspect -- although he comes down on the side of the softies.
“This country maybe needs to feel more vulnerable, act more vulnerable,” Downie says. The rangy singer is elaborating on his song The Hard Canadian in an east-Toronto coffee shop, with a cup of java in front of him. The character is as uncommunicative as a sheet of rock in coldest February, but as Downie sings against a howling backdrop, the Hard Canadian drags a “brush through … wet pigment,” remembering the “glow” of someone’s nightgown. His hardness is really just an act.
Downie’s speaking voice is soft and raspy, but as he builds up a head of conversational steam, a glimmer of the yearning, anthemic chorus-shouting singer shines through. “If you want to know what being Canadian is,” he says, “it’s being part of the human race, allowing yourself to be vulnerable, which has been scared off, warded away, girded against.
“I know that doesn’t really fly in the halls of Parliament or in the 100 by 200 confines of the hockey rink -- both arenas that are supposed to hint at the possibility of man’s ideal rather than just mirroring our reality. But both are left a little wanting, and no one can figure out why. Ergo, thus we conclude, hockey players need to be more vulnerable. I can kiss goodbye to that coaching job: ‘Boys, you need to be vulnerable in your own end. Show them your soft side.’ ”
Downie was once an amateur hockey goalie who backstopped his Bantam team from small-town eastern Ontario to the provincial finals. And yet, he says, he doesn’t play anymore; the fact that his beloved Bruins (former general manager Harry Sinden was his godfather) dropped ignominiously out of the playoffs leaves him feeling resigned rather than actively upset. His band may sell Hip-logo hockey jerseys to their fans, but Downie’s own look is more bohemian -- he wears a ball compass safety-pinned to the pocket of his light-brown corduroy blazer, a purple-beaded bracelet around his wrist. He spreads a Moleskin notebook on his table like a talisman; it’s crammed with charts, lists of appointments, titles of music to check out, snatches of overheard conversation, and lines transcribed from his wide and compulsive reading.
“I’m just a student,” he says. “I’m learning all the time, and like anyone, I’m just looking for words I can use and a hummable melody. I think Bono said something like that, but I thought it was kind of good.”
When he needs lyrics, he pores over his notebooks. The opening track of The Grand Bounce, The East Wind, developed in this way. With a melody in his head, he happened on a phrase used by a neighbour of his, about how the east wind “doesn’t go around you; it goes through you.”
This line yielded the song’s chorus; under it on the same notebook page were quotes from Walter Van Tillburg Clark’s Western novel The Ox-Bow Incident and from Al Purdy’s poem Necropsy of Love. He stuck them both in the song as lyrical “placeholders,” and found that they worked surprisingly well. “It’s like quick-drying cement,” he says. “You’re really loath to change it after the fact.” He kept them in, “to honour these three people who gave me these things; they happened to be three of my favourite people.”
The rush of fervently strummed acoustic guitars that open the track are the result of a brainstorm by one of his other favourite people, producer Chris Walla. The Death Cab for Cutie guitarist lends his own band’s momentum and pop sensibility to The Grand Bounce, and the sound is given shape by The Country of Miracles, the backing band Downie has employed for his three solo albums so far. The musicians, including members of The Dinner Is Ruined, straddle the boundary between experimental music and indie rock; on The Grand Bounce, their sonic weirdness hovers around the edges of a series of accessible songs.
There’s a feeling of vastness throughout, reinforced by Downie’s images of crashing seas, wicked winds, and days that “explode” into nights. The album’s title itself feels epic, and it’s another quote -- a term for desertion drawn from Evan S. Connell’s biography of General Custer.
“I dare say we live in a deserter’s paradise here,” Downie says. “As I’m fond of calling it: The Great White Plan B. It is the place you can go when things don’t work out. Or your country wants to break away from the crown: Come up to Canada; we’ll give you some property; we’ll call you loyalists. The country is made of deserters. As it relates to my record, every song is dealing with it, as every song might. Maybe Céline Dion is singing about desertion, or fear of it. Till death do us part.”
But where Dion’s heart will, apparently, go on, what about The Tragically Hip? As this is a solo album, could he be singing about deserting them?
Downie doesn’t smile that easily, but a wry grin crosses his face. “This is the last bit of due diligence that I didn’t do. Thinking, ‘Oh, right -- it could be construed that way.’ There’s no perfect title, I guess. But no. If that were the case, it’s hardly the way I would do it. It’s a bit cold.”
The Grand Bounce is available on vinyl now, and in wide release on Tuesday.
Mike Doherty, National Post · Tuesday, Jun. 1, 2010
If Gord Downie didn’t exist, Canada would have to invent him. After all, who else unites such a wide spectrum of Canadians, from sensitive nature-worshippers to surly, lager-swilling brawlers? On his new solo album, The Grand Bounce, the Tragically Hip front man even sings about how the two extremes can have more in common than one may suspect -- although he comes down on the side of the softies.
“This country maybe needs to feel more vulnerable, act more vulnerable,” Downie says. The rangy singer is elaborating on his song The Hard Canadian in an east-Toronto coffee shop, with a cup of java in front of him. The character is as uncommunicative as a sheet of rock in coldest February, but as Downie sings against a howling backdrop, the Hard Canadian drags a “brush through … wet pigment,” remembering the “glow” of someone’s nightgown. His hardness is really just an act.
Downie’s speaking voice is soft and raspy, but as he builds up a head of conversational steam, a glimmer of the yearning, anthemic chorus-shouting singer shines through. “If you want to know what being Canadian is,” he says, “it’s being part of the human race, allowing yourself to be vulnerable, which has been scared off, warded away, girded against.
“I know that doesn’t really fly in the halls of Parliament or in the 100 by 200 confines of the hockey rink -- both arenas that are supposed to hint at the possibility of man’s ideal rather than just mirroring our reality. But both are left a little wanting, and no one can figure out why. Ergo, thus we conclude, hockey players need to be more vulnerable. I can kiss goodbye to that coaching job: ‘Boys, you need to be vulnerable in your own end. Show them your soft side.’ ”
Downie was once an amateur hockey goalie who backstopped his Bantam team from small-town eastern Ontario to the provincial finals. And yet, he says, he doesn’t play anymore; the fact that his beloved Bruins (former general manager Harry Sinden was his godfather) dropped ignominiously out of the playoffs leaves him feeling resigned rather than actively upset. His band may sell Hip-logo hockey jerseys to their fans, but Downie’s own look is more bohemian -- he wears a ball compass safety-pinned to the pocket of his light-brown corduroy blazer, a purple-beaded bracelet around his wrist. He spreads a Moleskin notebook on his table like a talisman; it’s crammed with charts, lists of appointments, titles of music to check out, snatches of overheard conversation, and lines transcribed from his wide and compulsive reading.
“I’m just a student,” he says. “I’m learning all the time, and like anyone, I’m just looking for words I can use and a hummable melody. I think Bono said something like that, but I thought it was kind of good.”
When he needs lyrics, he pores over his notebooks. The opening track of The Grand Bounce, The East Wind, developed in this way. With a melody in his head, he happened on a phrase used by a neighbour of his, about how the east wind “doesn’t go around you; it goes through you.”
This line yielded the song’s chorus; under it on the same notebook page were quotes from Walter Van Tillburg Clark’s Western novel The Ox-Bow Incident and from Al Purdy’s poem Necropsy of Love. He stuck them both in the song as lyrical “placeholders,” and found that they worked surprisingly well. “It’s like quick-drying cement,” he says. “You’re really loath to change it after the fact.” He kept them in, “to honour these three people who gave me these things; they happened to be three of my favourite people.”
The rush of fervently strummed acoustic guitars that open the track are the result of a brainstorm by one of his other favourite people, producer Chris Walla. The Death Cab for Cutie guitarist lends his own band’s momentum and pop sensibility to The Grand Bounce, and the sound is given shape by The Country of Miracles, the backing band Downie has employed for his three solo albums so far. The musicians, including members of The Dinner Is Ruined, straddle the boundary between experimental music and indie rock; on The Grand Bounce, their sonic weirdness hovers around the edges of a series of accessible songs.
There’s a feeling of vastness throughout, reinforced by Downie’s images of crashing seas, wicked winds, and days that “explode” into nights. The album’s title itself feels epic, and it’s another quote -- a term for desertion drawn from Evan S. Connell’s biography of General Custer.
“I dare say we live in a deserter’s paradise here,” Downie says. “As I’m fond of calling it: The Great White Plan B. It is the place you can go when things don’t work out. Or your country wants to break away from the crown: Come up to Canada; we’ll give you some property; we’ll call you loyalists. The country is made of deserters. As it relates to my record, every song is dealing with it, as every song might. Maybe Céline Dion is singing about desertion, or fear of it. Till death do us part.”
But where Dion’s heart will, apparently, go on, what about The Tragically Hip? As this is a solo album, could he be singing about deserting them?
Downie doesn’t smile that easily, but a wry grin crosses his face. “This is the last bit of due diligence that I didn’t do. Thinking, ‘Oh, right -- it could be construed that way.’ There’s no perfect title, I guess. But no. If that were the case, it’s hardly the way I would do it. It’s a bit cold.”
The Grand Bounce is available on vinyl now, and in wide release on Tuesday.