[potsie]

A turgid record that strains the ear if listened straight through, it's very much a pure "studio" album - nearly every song clearly having been layered together track by track, rather than emerging via a more organic inspiration. The music doesn't breathe like the earlier stuff did - rather, it suffocates

Lake Fever (I still prefer the pre-album version they played at the 2000 New Years Day show in Toronto. The studio version is way overproduced, and there's just too much going on. This song would have benefited from a "less is more" approach IMO.)

I'll third this idea of claustrophobia and lack of breathing room on this album. "Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away" (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)... an idea that would have served the Hip well to have kept in mind when recording this album, both in terms of song production and number of songs they ended up putting on the album.