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I neglected to mention the song NFPA in my post. It is stunning, simple, and beautiful. Someone mentioned before that they saw it as a breakup song. I've never heard it that way. If we take it as coming out of Gord's ex-wife's cancer diagnosis and treatment, it strikes me rather as a song of commitment. Of loving and serving each other, whether easy or difficult. If wisteria fading is a euphemism for death, then 'Plan A' is "'til death do us part." That's the sort of 'everything' you give to a spouse who is battling cancer. No matter how hard or how rough, nothing short of everything's enough.
Jeff
June 21, 2003 Toronto, ON: SkyDome
July 1, 2004 Toronto, ON: Molson Amphitheatre
November 26, 2004 Toronto, ON: Air Canada Centre
June 24, 2006 Toronto, ON: Historic Fort York
May 10, 2007 Indianapolis, IN: The Vogue
July 14, 2011 Edmonton, AB: Northlands Festival Site
June 30, 2012 Niagara-on-the-Lake, ON: The Commons at Butler's Barracks
January 23, 2013 Edmonton, AB: Rexall Place
July 28, 2016 Edmonton, AB: Rexall Place
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I've always enjoyed this album, and while there are a few tracks that aren't terribly memorable, there is nothing here that is bad, which is more than I can say for WATS, and especially MMP. I loved At Transformation the moment I heard it and haven't changed my stance since; MMP took a while for me to get, but once I heard them open with it in Rochester, I was hooked. Lookahead is fun, but a bit short, while WWTBI is one of the best songs in their entire catalogue, and some of Gord's most earnest, passionate vocals performances. I love Streets, especially Johnny's drumming, it's just a lot of fun. I have to been in a certain mood to listen to NFPA, but it is a beautiful song, and rather underrated. Modern Spirit is a bit of a "meh" song for me, nothing bad about it but nothing that really stands out.I really like the guitar line of About This Map, and Gord's got some cool lyrics in it too. Take Forever, another poppy-fun tune, but nothing really grabs me about it. Done and Done has some really good lyrics, but something about the song just doesn't grab me. Nothing needs to be said about Attawapiskat that hasn't been said; it's one of their best.
I know lots people hated this tour, but the U.S. shows I saw in Rochester and Syracuse we're fantastic (not sure about the OP opinion on Syracuse...needless to say I have a different opinion of the show, as I thought it was great) and are at or near the top of the 22 Hip shows I've seen. Overall, I think NFPA is a solid album with a few fantastic moments that showed the Hip were still able to push in new directions without sacrificing the quality of their music.
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Saw several shows over the 2011-2012 era
2011 in Moncton and Charlottetown, they previewed the album with the trio they played that tour.
2012 Niagara-on-the-Lake was incredible. They played Goodnight Attawapiskat that show.
2013 I saw Moncton and Halifax, and thought those shows were fantastic. Halifax 2013 had an amazing setlist, and me and my best friends were front and center.
We Want To Be It has always been, and continues to be my favourite on this record.
2004-12-03 - Saint John/2005-09-03 - Moncton/2006-06-30 - Charlottetown/2006-11-09/10 - Montreal/2007-09-11 - Fredericton/2007-09-13 - Halifax/2007-09-14 - Sydney/2007-09-15 - Charlottetown/2008-06-30 - Charlottetown/2009-05-01/02 - Montreal/2011-06-28 - Moncton/2011-06-30 - Charlottetown/2012-06-30 - Niagara-on-the-Lake/2013-02-01 - Moncton/2013-02-02 - Halifax/2015-01-10 - Toronto/2015-02-20 - Montreal/2015-07-17 - Ottawa/2016-08-18 - Ottawa/2016-08-20 - Kingston
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I was incredibly sad to have missed the WATS tour and then with the time between WATS and NFPA, I was starting to think I may have seen my last show.
Was excited for the release and really enjoyed pretty much everything on first listen. For me there were no stinkers on the album and there were several songs that really grew on me witty more listens.
As others have mentioned, I was struck by the return to a more live off the floor feel along with something lacking in the drums. I was also struck by the amount of repetition - definitely something that was more apparent on this album than previous ones to me.
I saw the show in Halifax and it was a great setlist; Gord definitely was screaming more than I'd seen before but as I hadn't seen them since WC, I didn't realize this was a thing. I assumed it was just due to his voice being shot near the end of the tour. The big thing I noticed was how much fun everyone seemed to be having. Seeing that, I felt sure they had many years left entertaining us all.
Shane
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I feel like I enjoyed NFPA a lot in contrast to WATS, but over time the shine has gone off. Then again, I guess that's sort of been the pattern since M@W in some ways.
I'd definitely agree that the A side is way better than the B side. I can't even remember anything about tracks 7 through 10 aside from their choruses (which are basically the song titles).
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If Barclay's book can shed any light on what Screamo Gord was up to, it'll make its bones. I doubt we'll get any explanation, though, other than a line or two mentioning the phenomenon. It's very rare that rock books tell us anything really interesting about the work itself.
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I think this is an insightful take by Killer Whale Tank:
Screamo Gord remains a mystery. He stopped doing it eventually, so clearly it was a willed choice rather than some side-effect of vocal damage or something. At the time I had a sense he was frustrated within the Hip - aggravated, I speculated, at the fact that the new work was being ignored and the audiences overwhelmingly going for the nostalgia value rather than any real engagement with the music; and so his response was to dismantle the songs, play games with timing and structure, and at times offer almost a cartoon of the leather-lunged hard rock vocals of 1990 that these nostalgia audiences wanted. That's just my theory. Perhaps with the FC revisited tour he had made his peace with the 'nostalgia' aspect and reverted back to proper singing.
Maybe in some ways he was aggravated about the death of rock radio and the lack of album sales that almost every band was now facing. I remember seeing the Hip in Buffalo right before Now For Plan A came out (they previewed We Want To Be It here) and it was kind of jarring how the newer songs fell flat for the otherwise great crowd. I think a lot of this has to do with rock bands like the Hip receiving less airplay then they'd have received a decade earlier. So now the newer songs were very foreign to many in attendance, which leads to a more muted reaction. But if you crank out the hits, you know you'll get them dancing. I could see this weighing on Gord.
As for me, I think The Lookahead is freaking brilliant. Just brilliant. I love Goodnight Attawapisktat. I agree with that being the Hip's last full-fledged rocker, though I'd also make a case for Machine. At Transformation is strong. I like We Want to Be It. Some great lines there. Man Machine Poem is different as others have said. Done and Done and About This Map are pretty enough. Then from there things take a nosedive. Streets Ahead...egads. That Modern Spirit...even worse. I think I might kind of like Take Forever but that song is so buried from what comes before it.
I think it's a very uneven album. The Hip growing up and going through some serious life moments, with more on the horizon. They're too good to not churn out some nice songs on each record, but it's not one of their stronger albums.
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I typically consider NFPA a lesser album than WATS, for the simple reason that WATS has a clutch of songs (Morning Moon, Recluse, and Depression Suite) that I enjoy more than any single song on NFPA. However, when it comes to a straight through listen, I think I prefer NFPA. This despite some fatiguing I get over the curious repetition in nearly every song. It's a basic song-writing technique that is the bedrock of most popular music, but I feel it is over done on this album.
Hip album cover art often does a great job of reflecting the contents of an album, but this one appears to be an exception. The playful cover art belies the mature subject matter contained within. This is not a whimsical album.
This album was touted as being a return to form with it's "live off the floor" sound. I don't really hear that (I've always associated that term with a "raw" sound, which NFPA is certainly not) but after listening to a lot of Bob Rock production over the past few weeks, I can't say I'm missing orchestration and pop-sounding keyboards on this one.
With the exception of At Transformation (which I loved upon first listen), I think this album is a grower and one that rewards repeated listenings. Unlike another album I'd rank in the bottom third of Hip output, M@W, I've learned to love this album more over time. There is an emotional intensity in Gord's passionate vocal delivery that I really enjoy. Sure, there are some songs that contain moments of over-singing (Modern Spirit, About This Map) where his voice is stretched a little too thin, but overall I like his performance here.
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As noted, I like Plan A a lot. But I agree that the production is a bit murky at times. By contrast, the Hip solo projects generally seem to have no such issue. The question is, why are the Hip so hard to produce? Enough of their albums have production issues that it's a fair question.
