02-10-2018, 10:36 AM
Well, I just don't agree that the "cartoon voice" is "the right voice" on "Drop-Off." For all of his talk about "getting out of my own way," Gord transparently fails to do so at times, and never more clearly than on this cut. It basically wrecks the thing for me, which is really too bad, because the song is an absolute beast. 
(By contrast, the extreme stylings on "The Kids Don't Get It" are indeed exactly right, perfectly capturing the strung-out aggravation of the song's lyrics. That song also has the finest "WHOOOs" in the canon, incidentally).
potsie makes good points about "Struggle." That's the thing about Bob Rock: his instincts when it comes to rock music are absolutely without taste. Like those guys who drive huge pickup trucks that can't even fit in their little townhouse driveways, his only response is MOAR BIGGER. More strings! More keyboard! Let's take an already-ponderous song and carry it over the top to plodding pompous tedium. The way to get good results from him is to keep him as far away from the "Rock" idiom as possible. Since he seems to have stopped listening to music around 1985, the minute you give him what sounds like a serious rock song, he will turn it into some ridiculous, dated artefact from the era of bloated self-important Classic Rawk. That's why he worked well with Ron Sexsmith, who can never be assimilated into Rock Music and therefore brought out his affable pop instincts, and why Rock was rather less offensive on WATS, where the material was more melodic (notwithstanding the horrors of the second half of "Queen of the Furrows," where all the ghastly tastelessness is puked into our ears all over again, or, as you say, the humourless grandiloquence of "Struggle").
(By contrast, the extreme stylings on "The Kids Don't Get It" are indeed exactly right, perfectly capturing the strung-out aggravation of the song's lyrics. That song also has the finest "WHOOOs" in the canon, incidentally).potsie makes good points about "Struggle." That's the thing about Bob Rock: his instincts when it comes to rock music are absolutely without taste. Like those guys who drive huge pickup trucks that can't even fit in their little townhouse driveways, his only response is MOAR BIGGER. More strings! More keyboard! Let's take an already-ponderous song and carry it over the top to plodding pompous tedium. The way to get good results from him is to keep him as far away from the "Rock" idiom as possible. Since he seems to have stopped listening to music around 1985, the minute you give him what sounds like a serious rock song, he will turn it into some ridiculous, dated artefact from the era of bloated self-important Classic Rawk. That's why he worked well with Ron Sexsmith, who can never be assimilated into Rock Music and therefore brought out his affable pop instincts, and why Rock was rather less offensive on WATS, where the material was more melodic (notwithstanding the horrors of the second half of "Queen of the Furrows," where all the ghastly tastelessness is puked into our ears all over again, or, as you say, the humourless grandiloquence of "Struggle").