We Are The Same - Critic Reviews

We Are The Same - Critic Reviews - Printable Version

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Re: We Are The Same - Critic Reviews - longseason - 04-06-2009

You mean the reviewer from the Post that wrote:

Quote:If it’s been some time since you’ve listened to The Hip, then give We Are the Same a listen and witness a Canadian institution embracing their status while making a confident decision to not stay the same.

I found the review pretty positive, actually.

While the guy from the Press wrote that the album "suffers when it finds the Hip straying too far from their comfort zone" he writes that ultimately "the Hip continue to flirt with new sounds while sounding precisely like themselves." I found it pretty even-handed and again, positive.

And the guy from the Vancouver Sun felt that World Container was a better album. I just don't agree.

Re: We Are The Same - Critic Reviews - Great Waiting List - 04-06-2009

longseason Wrote:And the guy from the Vancouver Sun felt that World Container was a better album. I just don't agree.

I agree with you, crappy review from the Vancouver Sun.

Re: We Are The Same - Critic Reviews - bingleaf - 04-07-2009

The guy in the Sun has no idea what he's talking about. World Container was a great album and I loved it, but this album, to me, is superior. I have been floored by this album and have already listened to it through 5 times. It's like an old friend...

Re: We Are The Same - Critic Reviews - Tthip - 04-07-2009

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.theprovince.com/Album+review+Tragically+Same/1470960/story.html">http://www.theprovince.com/Album+review ... story.html</a>

While the title might have been true for past releases, it isn’t of the new Hip album.

Working with Bob Rock, the combo plays at its most twangy and — for them — varied.

The country-folk opener “Morning Moon” boasts the first of many multi-part harmony hooks on the dozen tracks.

It’s odd, but at this stage in its career, the band is making some of the most melodic and “classic” rock in its history.

There isn’t a tune on the album that doesn’t scream arena rock, so wait for the tour. Still, is it the songs or the production that has the most impact?

Re: We Are The Same - Critic Reviews - Tthip - 04-07-2009

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.thestar.com/Entertainment/article/614687">http://www.thestar.com/Entertainment/article/614687</a>

3 out of 4 stars
The Hip looked to an unlikely place – Bob Rock – to shake themselves out of their comfort zone on 2006's World Container, and the experiment appears to have been successful enough to warrant an even more devil-may-care return engagement with the super-producer for We Are the Same.

For a band of its station, the Hip has always been commendably game to mess with its formula. Never has it parted ways with the signature sound a nation knows and loves, though, quite as boldly as it has on this topsy-turvy collection of hangdog country rambles ("Morning Moon"), meditative baroque-pop epics ("Now the Struggle Has a Name," the three-part "The Depression Suite") and oddly shaped rock-outs ("Queen of the Furrows," "Frozen in My Tracks").

The band seems unsure about what it wants to be, yet also quite steadfast in its mid-career resolve not to settle for simply being itself: the familiar twin-guitar tones are in short supply, strings and Hammond B3 are draped warmly over many arrangements and Gord Downie pushes his voice in places we never expected it to go, even trying on a falsetto and a bit of Rufus Wainwright on the lovely "The Last Recluse." People will argue about this record, and some will hate it. But the fact that it's destined to stir up strong reactions signals, to me, the stubborn vitality of an act that could easily have sleepwalked into those six sold-out shows at Massey Hall next month.

Top track: "Coffee Girl." Dainty, loop-driven pop melancholia that'll have you unsure if you're still listening to the Tragically Hip. Best new tune on a Hip album since at least "Poets" or "Bobcaygeon."

Re: We Are The Same - Critic Reviews - Tthip - 04-07-2009

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/review+Tragically+second+outing+with+producer+Rock+fails+match+predecessor+promise/1470521/story.html">http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainme ... story.html</a>

The Tragically Hip
We Are The Same
Rating: Three stars out of five

Way to kill the momentum, fellas.

When The Tragically Hip hooked up with hard rock producer Bob Rock in 2006 for their World Container album, it felt like the band had again found its focus. Because, with the odd exception, the Hip had been sounding tired for a long time at that point. Their work had grown largely self indulgent with frontman Gord Downie’s once poignant lyricism spiralling off into dull, earnest obscurity as the band grew increasingly stiff behind him.

While World Container was polarizing for Hip fans, with some finding it too overtly slick and commercial, the reality is that disc got the band back on track with a batch of lean, direct rock songs and sharp hooks that lived up to their excellent early work.

Bob Rock is on board for the Hip’s latest We Are The Same too, but somehow the winning chemistry of World Container seems lost.

To be sure, the two discs go in entirely different directions. While World Container was a rock record, We Are The Same is more along the lines of folk rock. This should take nothing away from the album’s potential. Some of the Hip’s greatest tunes have been in the folky vein, from Fiddler’s Green and Wheat Kings to Ahead By A Century and Bobcaygeon.

The problem is, with a few exceptions, the folk rock on We Are The Same isn’t of that calibre. A lot of it feels like a sombre, adult contemporary poetry reading.

The wistful countryish opening track Morning Moon is likable enough — a refreshing, humble departure to open up the disc, but it sets the tone for most of the album too, and that becomes a problem, because tame tunes like Honey, Please and The Exact Feeling, while pleasant, just aren’t all that exciting. Same with The Last Recluse, with Downie emoting earnestly about “the last Canada goose.” Coffee Girl is slightly better with strong lyrics and a surprise trumpet solo straight out of AM radio song, but it’s more affable than thrilling.

The disc also features the Hip’s stab at an epic with The Depression Suite, an orchestrated, nine-and-a-half minute song that’s engaging in places, but ultimately it just rambles on too long without the cathartic payoff that such a tune should warrant.

Thankfully, the disc gets much better in the second half. Queen of the Furrows is an eccentric country ditty with an impressively sizzling build up and Speed River boasts a breezy yet determined kick. Both ought to go over great in concert.

Frozen In Your Tracks is striking, too, with a massive, swelling chorus, that sounds choir driven. And the first single Love Is A First is a rocker that sounds better suited to the last album with torrid guitars and a raving delivery by Downie that’s half sung and half a crazily spoken diatribe.

These songs save the album, ultimately, but they’re not enough to spare us the disappointment we feel after the comeback that World Container promised.

Re: We Are The Same - Critic Reviews - Tthip - 04-07-2009

<a class="postlink" href="http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/theampersand/archive/2009/04/06/cd-review-we-are-the-same-by-the-tragically-hip.aspx">http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blog ... y-hip.aspx</a>

We Are The Same,
The Tragically Hip
Universal

The photo on the cover of The Tragically Hip's new album, We Are The Same, displays the five members of the band huddled around a bonfire. And there's your first clue to the theme of the album. Within are songs for wild places, for the end of a long day wandering through the Canadian outback. The fireside is a place for telling tales, after all, and Gord Downie's lyrics are keen to explore our rural terrains - referencing Canada geese, farming, canoes and being under the stars. It visits other places as well - Chicago, and New Orleans. But it's not just external landscapes. Indeed, Downie and company are once again interested in his previously discussed "Himalayas of the mind".

We Are The Same, musically at least, is not the same as the Hip of old. This album is sweeping and lush, with horns and violins; yet from the lovely opener Morning Moon it retains a folksy, country charm. Downie's vocals have softened, warmed in tone. His somber chants on The Last Recluse are one of the album's highlights. But that's not to say there aren't flourishes of stadium rock here. For instance, Now The Struggle Has No Name - a kind of amped-up Gordon Lightfoot; and Love is A First, which is the closest to vintage Hip that the band gets on this album.

But the album mostly stays close to the fireside - on The Depression State and Queen Of the Furrows, the band blend quiet reflections with little flairs of muscular guitar. And on the album's closer, Country Day, the "gentle breeze, gently blown", carries the band's lament for the environment, told against orchestral swells and chorals.

If it’s been some time since you’ve listened to The Hip, then give We Are the Same a listen and witness a Canadian institution embracing their status while making a confident decision to not stay the same.

– Brad Frenette/National Post

Re: We Are The Same - Critic Reviews - NegPhil - 04-07-2009

What does The Tragically Hip and Bath Ontario have in common
April 06, 2009 By: Chris Categor

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.guitarlicksandtips.com/2009/04/06/what-does-the-tragically-hip-and-bath-ontario-have-in-common/">http://www.guitarlicksandtips.com/2009/ ... in-common/</a>

So what does The Tragically Hip and Bath Ontario have in common? Well Canada’s ambassadors of Rock & roll, The Tragically Hip, has found this really cool place to practice their musical song writing artistry in the great city of Bath Ontario.

The band is an extension of Canada’s way of thinking and life style to most of us rockers up here. The village of Bath Ontario has the same sort of relationship to our country’s identity of the past and now the future. Bath was founded by United Empire Loyalists, who help forge our history as far back as 1784.
This village is found outside of Kingston Ontario, which happens to be the home town of The Tragically Hip.

I found this little bit of The Tragically Hips trivia while leafing through our latest installment of Macleans Magazine, a weekly Canadian News publication. It shows these intimate pictures of the band and their new castle! This venue would make any band jealous with envy!

So check it out and tell us if you had, or you knew a band that had, a practice hall quite like this before? I never had a rehearsal hall anything like this, but I would have killed for something like this in the past!

Keep on Jammin’

MacLeans.CA
The Tragically Hip — in rehearsal

[Image: thehip01.jpg?w=635]

Re: We Are The Same - Critic Reviews - Tthip - 04-08-2009

<a class="postlink" href="http://blogcritics.org/archives/2009/04/08/144031.php">http://blogcritics.org/archives/2009/04/08/144031.php</a>

Music Review: The Tragically Hip - We Are the Same
Written by Jordan Richardson
Published April 08, 2009

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all
- Emily Dickinson, "Hope is the Thing With Feathers"

If ever there was a band to sum up the Canadian character, it would be Kingston’s The Tragically Hip. From the sun-yellowed prairies of Saskatchewan to the heavin’ metropolis of Toronto, from the rain-soaked lanes of Vancouver to the warmth of Nova Scotia, The Hip have criss-crossed Canada with their tales of love, struggle, passion, glory, and hockey.

The quintet has poetically told the stories of thousands, keenly engaging in the beautiful accounts of the fisherman, the longshoreman, the waitress, the businesswoman, the lawmaker, the hockey player, the truck driver, the farmer.

And now, with the world to all appearances crumbling ‘round us, frontman Gordon Downie and the band return to draw us near, hold us close, and open our eyes.

The Hip have dispatched Bob Rock again to serve as producer. His work on 2006’s World Container helped shake something loose and it’s exciting to see the band continue on the same path with their eleventh, the aptly-titled We Are the Same.

Unity is the essential theme. The lyrics ring with devotion, humanity, assurance, and joy. The music, smart in its alt-country tang, surges forward with confidence and dexterity.

Downie, who once sang “For a good life, we just might have to weaken,” fearlessly asserts positive ground and compels his listeners, his host, to scuffle with their own reflections. Examination of the inner architecture of our very souls provides direction and grants us strength to carry on.

In this hurtlin’ gap, We Are the Same.

“Morning Moon” opens things up with a wonderful, crisp alt-country gait. The tune feels like it would be at home under paper lanterns at an Alberta barn party, delicately lighting the occupants as they pull together. Guitar accents the piece with affectionate twang.

With “Coffee Girl,” The Hip crack out a tune that is sure to be a fan favourite. Bassist Gord Sinclair and drummer Johnny Fay shape a taut groove and Downie serenades his “beautiful and disaffected” protagonist. A trumpet feels right at home, adding cosy tone.

The shimmering, broad “Now the Struggle Has a Name” swells with strings and Downie’s wavering vocals. It serves as the perfect lead-in to “The Depression Suite,” a multifarious work that is The Hip’s longest tune to date. It flows and eases into its pulse, coming together with Downie’s consoling phrases and wobbly enunciations. “Are you going through something?” he asks. “I am too.”

Comfort is really the name of the game, as The Tragically Hip have composed a record to serve as the proverbial hug or pat-on-the-back for a bushed, broken, bothered public. The songs elevate, every note feelin’ like the right note. With a sort of working class energy, The Hip toil hard for every melody they make.

“Love is a First” is the roasting, guitar-driven rocker of the album, made whole with Downie’s mid-song rant.

We Are the Same is a record with a theme, maybe even a theory. Fuck it, this is a record with a mission. Spurred by stunning melodies, Downie’s elegiac lyrics, and a solid wallop of optimism, We Are the Same finds The Hip doling out a little bout of what many of us could use right now: hope.

Re: We Are The Same - Critic Reviews - Tthip - 04-08-2009

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.timescolonist.com/Entertainment/Reviews+latest+confounding+intoxicating/1476929/story.html">http://www.timescolonist.com/Entertainm ... story.html</a>

CD Reviews: Hip's latest is confounding but intoxicating
New effort slow out of the gate, but it still rocks

By Mike Devlin, Times ColonistApril

THE TRAGICALLY HIP
We Are the Same (Universal)

Rating 3 1/2 (out of five)

Brace yourself, Hip faithful. Despite the reassuring title, and the promise of its previous recording, not everything is in its rightful place on the Kingston, Ont., band's 11th and most confounding album to date.

It's the Tragically Hip all right, and for sure that's Bob Rock listed as producer. But the wonderful Rock/Hip mojo that birthed 2006's World Container, the band's best release in nearly a decade, now seems as if it was shipped overseas with no return address. Strings, trumpets, mandolins and a nine-and-a-half-minute song called The Depression Suite? Say it ain't so.

There's plenty wrong with the folk-rock first half, which is too slow and uninvolved out of the gate. But when the band gets buoyant during the home stretch, and singer Gord Downie wails and guitarist Robbie Baker shreds, the results are familiar but intoxicating nonetheless.

We Are the Same gets better each time out, but listeners will have to work for it (allow us to suggest headphones -- a huge plus). Don't have the time/wherewithal/interest in such a commitment? Watch for the band in June when they come to Victoria, because some of these songs are going to sound triumphant in concert.

Re: We Are The Same - Critic Reviews - Roy-at-tth - 04-09-2009

Ouch...

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.eyeweekly.com/music/ondisc/article/57334">http://www.eyeweekly.com/music/ondisc/article/57334</a>
The Tragically Hip: We Are The Same
Universal

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BY Chris Bilton April 07, 2009 16:04
Editorial Rating:

At this point in The Tragically Hip’s career, the quarter-century-old quintet might as well be Canada’s official band, though they haven’t turned in a truly great album since 1998’s Phantom Power. With We Are the Same, The Hip — again working with notorious cred-killer Bob Rock — assess the troubled state of the world through Gord Downie’s trademark wordplay and the band’s penchant for easy-rock songwriting. (Seriously, they’re starting to sound like Blue Rodeo.) The epic three-part “Depression Suite” doesn’t make any impact until its final third, and “Coffee Girl” comes across as little more than high-school poetry. Only the first single “Love is a First” delivers quintessential Hip-ness with its tongue-twisting refrain (“As bad as or worse”), a noisy chorus and meta-lyrical indulgences (“It’s just that you don’t just blurt ‘Love is a curse, Love is a curse’”). It’s not enough to root for Downie anymore; the band’s mediocrity has finally overhelmed him.

Re: We Are The Same - Critic Reviews - Plankton - 04-09-2009

A couple of things about the majority of these reviews:

It's as if they will only like immediately catchy songs and have never had any music grow on them before. I don't mean this in a 'no way the album has to be amazing!' kind of way, it's just they seem repulsied by the idea of a Hip album not full of rock hooks.

Also, it's then not suprising most of them don't seem to have listened to anything outside of The Hip's 'hits'.

Re: We Are The Same - Critic Reviews - chris - 04-09-2009

Plankton Wrote:A couple of things about the majority of these reviews:

It's as if they will only like immediately catchy songs and have never had any music grow on them before. I don't mean this in a 'no way the album has to be amazing!' kind of way, it's just they seem repulsied by the idea of a Hip album not full of rock hooks.

Also, it's then not suprising most of them don't seem to have listened to anything outside of The Hip's 'hits'.

You can almost tell immediately if the "critic" is reviewing this album on it's own, or comparing it to hits of days gone by...

Re: We Are The Same - Critic Reviews - Tthip - 04-09-2009

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.metronews.ca/toronto/entertainment/article/210881--we-are-the-same-by-the-tragically-hip">http://www.metronews.ca/toronto/enterta ... ically-hip</a>

The Tragically Hip
Album: We Are The Same
Label: Universal
Rating: ****

This is not an album that’s going to knock the listener through the walls with ragged guitar and rock ’n’ roll angst. As a matter of fact, it will probably challenge old Hip fans still looking for another New Orleans Is Sinking. No sprawling rock anthems here. Instead we get the country calm of Morning Moon, the gentle melody of Honey Please and the grandiose Depression Suite. The three-part album centrepiece clocks in at almost 10 minutes and is held together by stately strings and Beatlesque production techniques that Bob Rock borrowed from Jeff Lynn. But always there’s that nasty Hip element rolling beneath the surface, occasionally rearing its head on songs like Love Is a First and Frozen In My Tracks. It’s a fine balance of light and dark, soft and hard, old and new. Downie and company push the sound ahead, but, as always, remain Hip.

Re: We Are The Same - Critic Reviews - Tthip - 04-09-2009

<a class="postlink" href="http://news.guelphmercury.com/arts/article/464609">http://news.guelphmercury.com/arts/article/464609</a>

The Tragically Hip We Are the Same (Universal)

We Are the Same -- as what? As we were 20 years and 11 albums ago? As you, our everyman Canadian audience? As a dependable Canadian institution, despite cosmetic changes to our sound over the years?

This seems disingenuous after hearing the ubiquitous radio single Love is the First, which is like nothing else in The Tragically Hip's discography: it opens with a guitar riff that could be from The Smiths, the bass line is borrowed from the Talking Heads' Psycho Killer, the squelchy guitar solo takes a page from Rage Against the Machine, and singer Gord Downie is spitting out the verses with a hunger and determination he's rarely shown in the studio.

The rest of We Are the Same is nowhere near as radical, though producer Bob Rock is clearly keeping these once-complacent CanRock icons on their toes. As he did on the underrated 2006 album World Container, he enforces an economy in their songwriting, leaving no time for pointless jamming and helping Downie focus on melody. He's also open to the idea of the male operatic backing vocals, accordion and pipe organ that weave their way through The Last Recluse, or the orchestral arrangements on The Struggle Has a Name and Depression Suite. Less encouraging is when some of the ghastlier ghosts from Rock's resumé rear their heads -- like the backing vocals on Frozen in Your Tracks, which sound like Dr. Feelgood-era Motley Crue.

Overall, however, this album refines the kind of band that The Tragically Hip have been trying to be ever since they entered middle age. Exhibit A is Coffee Girl, a superior rewrite of 2001's Lake Fever, with a trumpet solo and Downie indulging a classic old fogey scenario: mooning over a "beautiful and disaffected" barista and her choice of mix tapes. He redeems himself by revelling in the marvels of the minutia of her routine, a feat he repeats with most of his characters here. "Don't want to look for words," he sings, "don't want to work that hard," and as a result he leans toward the literal rather than the abstract for much of the album.

Granted, sometimes the mundane details are simply that. "Are you going through something? Because I am too." "You are my heart. This is how I feel." In both instances, those aren't throwaway lines in the verses, but a chorus beat into submission.

Despite the red herring of the title, We Are the Same shows The Tragically Hip successfully entering a third stage of their career, one that finds them focused, engaged and acting their age