PunBB

Gah. Sorry for the length of this. I'm blaming the subject matter. I've cut it into 2 posts:

I started listening to this whole album again over the summer, & the revelation for me was 'train overnight'. Our loss if it takes a hit this round.

There are so few songs where Johnny Fay's light shines right out the front of the song, & this is one of them. Everything follows Johnny's lead here--Gord S, obviously, but also Gord & his voice & lyrics, & even the guitars, rough & muscular one minute & shimmery the next. This song is a really great leap into rhythm as the essential meaning & metaphor of the song.

I freely admit my tumble into the hip was words first, gord & his lyrics front & centre, & in that respect yes this song is a bit of a disappointment. But this song speaks to what I realized the last few years, which is that the band's collaborative strength is as central to the Hip as Gord is. Each of the guys can be central, & it's great to stumble into a song where the band organizes itself musically around Johnny. As fun a discovery for me as realizing how much the band organized itself around Gord S on 'Day For Night'.

In fact, my suggestion (oh blasphemy!) is don't read the lyrics. This song actually works best when you're not quite sure what Gord's saying--is the song moving too fast for the words to keep up?Just listen for the words you can hear, the words he sings clearly so you'll hear them, & let those ones stand:


masterpieces
visions
inexorable
that train overnight
outside that train overnight
apologizing--
Canada outside that train overnight


That's perfect enough, isn't it?

But the music. The music! The sound & rhythm of motion itself, the music doesn't just tell the story it BECOMES the story, becomes the train itself hurtling thru the night & wilderness, past shadows & vastness. Masterpieces. Visions. It captures the sensation of speed & mass & power so perfectly, & to give Gord credit, are there any two words more suited to that sound than 'train overnight'? But Johnny Fay is the engine driving powering the whole song down the tracks at about a million million miles an hour--SPEED! POWER!--it's the dark Alex Colville horse pounding down the moonlit tracks--POWER! SPEED!

(part2)
I love that aurally this song is pared down to nothing but train. landscape. writer. Like the lovely quiet moment in the middle of the song. Middle of the night. Middle of the wilderness. No one else is awake but Gord. Or you? Or Me? The song & the train round a corner & put the evergreen wilderness behind them for a moment to hug a still moonlit lake, purple & silver. & then plunge back into trees beating past in the dark. All conjured thru rhythm & sound.

& then the last few lines, if you do read the lyrics: reminding you they're all in silver jets now, looking down or looking back. Nobody gets anywhere anymore on an overnight train.

I can't sit still to 'train overnight'. It's the insistent dance partner who won't let me sit this one out, drags me to my feet for one more salsa shuffle kick at the can. Song so good it makes movement contagious. Like 'Boots or Hearts' in that respect.

& for me, this song will forever be linked to DireWolf/DarkCanuck, like they're 2 journeys into the same territory. The rhythm of motion, shimmery guitar, elusive lyrics...It's like DireWolf/DarkCanuck is the roadtrip thru the wilderness they first saw on 'train overnight'.

emperor penguin Wrote:I'm in the massive minority on this, but I love Train Overnight. It's easily in my top 15 Hip songs of all time. I love everything about it, the sound of the drums, the groove, the way Gord's voice sounds, the guitar riff, the abstract lyrics and how they all fit together. I loved it the first time I heard it and my adoration has never waned.

Lake Fever still edges it out for favourite song on the album though.

I dig this tune too. I always thought Kate’s backing vocals on bootlegs really added to this song

Some excellent ruminations on Train Overnight! Good job, guys. You've inspired me to dive into this song again and rediscover it's charms. I always really liked the lyric "if it's not a Canada of a pain, we'll entertain the idea of train."

I'm going to say this quietly, because I don't want to rouse any feelings of outrage and hatred, but I really like The Bastard. My feelings toward it can not be dissociated from "time and place" sentimentality. I listened to it many, many times on a bootleg I had of the January 1, 2000 show (when it was known as "This is the Bastard"), and fell in love with it in the 6 months before M@W was released. The live version from that time is far superior to what ended up on the album. The song suffers from the addition of the tabla, and the "tumbling" sound of Johnny's drums when the band kicks back in after "pool in the mountains" is more muted on the studio version. Live, Johnny gets to shine with a few Keith Moon avalanche-coming-down-the-mountain drumming moments. I'll take this over the dull "The Completists" all day, any day, and twice on Sundays.

chagrinfalls Wrote:(part2)
I love that aurally this song is pared down to nothing but train. landscape. writer. Like the lovely quiet moment in the middle of the song. Middle of the night. Middle of the wilderness. No one else is awake but Gord. Or you? Or Me? The song & the train round a corner & put the evergreen wilderness behind them for a moment to hug a still moonlit lake, purple & silver. & then plunge back into trees beating past in the dark. All conjured thru rhythm & sound.

& then the last few lines, if you do read the lyrics: reminding you they're all in silver jets now, looking down or looking back. Nobody gets anywhere anymore on an overnight train.

I can't sit still to 'train overnight'. It's the insistent dance partner who won't let me sit this one out, drags me to my feet for one more salsa shuffle kick at the can. Song so good it makes movement contagious. Like 'Boots or Hearts' in that respect.

& for me, this song will forever be linked to 'The Dire Wolf', like they're 2 journeys into the same territory. The rhythm of motion, shimmery guitar, elusive lyrics...It's like 'Dire Wolf' is the roadtrip thru the wilderness they first saw on 'train overnight'.

I enjoyed reading your thoughts on Train Overnight. :thumb: :thumb:

That was a pretty sweet ode to train overnight. Made we wanna re-listen.

Well even though Train Overnight is getting slaughtered in the vote, I'm glad to see that there's some love for it out there and that others may give it a second chance. We're starting a movement here. Chagrinfalls, your thoughts on it were great, perfectly captures everything I like about it.

Now we wait for killer whale tank to come and tell us all why we're wrong and why the song really does suck

emperor penguin Wrote:Well even though Train Overnight is getting slaughtered in the vote, I'm glad to see that there's some love for it out there and that others may give it a second chance. We're starting a movement here. Chagrinfalls, your thoughts on it were great, perfectly captures everything I like about it.

Now we wait for killer whale tank to come and tell us all why we're wrong and why the song really does suck

Ain't no justice, emperor penguin. Unless 30 people vote overnight for Sharks & Tiger the Lion, it looks like train overnight will be taken from us far far too soon. We can comfort ourselves with this piercing wisdom:

Chris Tanz Wrote:That was a pretty sweet ode to train overnight. Made we wanna re-listen.

Done, but still nope.

But also went back and listened to "This is the Bastard" on the NYE 2000 bootleg. Yeah, that song coulda been a contender but the studio version is too much.

Ct

I don't hate "Train Overnight" by any means. For years it was one of the tracks that I didn't skip - until finally it became a skipper. Listened to it the other day and remain satisfied that I can safely leave it out of my personal M@W playlist, it being an OK effort but not really worth my four minutes. Now, I agree with chagrin that Gord D's voice is great on it (the spaciousness created by the tasteful use of reverb really helps), and the playing is indeed excellent. Unlike charginfalls, though, I can't look past the lyrics, which are some of Gord's worst - just a bunch of abstractions ponderously strung together, a thesaurus exercise with little at its heart but a band's boring travel details and a vague "idea of train." To me this leaves a hole at the heart of the song, in that it's not really *about* anything worth a damn. Add to that the lack of any real hooks, and it's of a piece with the general limitations of M@W.

"Sharks" would be my candidate for a complicated "studio" song in which the band is nevertheless really cookin' and in which the whole manages to rise above the sum of its parts. Not coincidentally, Gord D's writing is more or less on form in that cut.

There's really no Hip song I hate. The worst I can say about any of them is that I'm indifferent. In other words, I'm open to being swayed -- and I'm open to hearing what others hear that perhaps I don't. Now that we have a finite number of Hip songs out there, I'm even more open to having light shone on songs that I'm indifferent about. In other words, I'm loving the discussions here. Keep it up, everyone. Keep fighting for the songs you love. Chagrinfalls, that was a beauty post!