[andrew sharpe]

I always felt Coffee Girl was just a straight up fictional character portrait. I imagined Gord being in a coffee shop and making up a story in his head about the barista.

[Killer Whale Tank]

I always felt Coffee Girl was just a straight up fictional character portrait. I imagined Gord being in a coffee shop and making up a story in his head about the barista.

I agree with that. And I always thought the song was a lost potential hit, because it's an expression of coffee culture.

But it's not a static portrait ('this girl gets up, sets up shop, makes coffee, listens to classic Beck' etc.); there's a point to it all. The song's problem, its tension, is generated by the 'he' in the song - the guy who 'came along and wrecked' the life she'd built. I don't know who this guy is, but he brings threat of betrayal. I think there's a link between those 'purveyors of cool, with their compacts of one' (i.e., self-serving deals), who have no sense of taste or integrity, and the 'heartscape or shoes' choice forced at the end of the song. At her darkest hour ('when the moon's behind the hill') that's when he will demand that sell her soul.

She is probably a struggling artist - poor, working as a barista to pay the bills - and he represents the forces of commerce.

[direwolf74]

The first is that "Depression Suite" loses me after the first movement. It's typical of Bob Rock that his big push to "innovate" with the Hip was to get them to do that grandiose 1970s clichee of the rock "suite." It's still more proof that he stopped listening to music around 1983. But in any case, my beef is not with the suite structure as such, as with the tedium the suite generates; its movements are insufficiently varied and, indeed, the last two portions are bits that probably would not have made the cut as songs onto themselves.

When "Depression" hits my playlist, I usually wait for "Bring on the requisite strangeness". That's where the song truly begins.

That's exactly the spot where the song hooks me in as well. I saw back-to-back shows at the Fillmore in San Francisco on this tour, and they opened with Depression on the first night. It was magical.

[cochise]

I always felt Coffee Girl was just a straight up fictional character portrait. I imagined Gord being in a coffee shop and making up a story in his head about the barista.

I agree with that. And I always thought the song was a lost potential hit, because it's an expression of coffee culture.

But it's not a static portrait ('this girl gets up, sets up shop, makes coffee, listens to classic Beck' etc.); there's a point to it all. The song's problem, its tension, is generated by the 'he' in the song - the guy who 'came along and wrecked' the life she'd built. I don't know who this guy is, but he brings threat of betrayal. I think there's a link between those 'purveyors of cool, with their compacts of one' (i.e., self-serving deals), who have no sense of taste or integrity, and the 'heartscape or shoes' choice forced at the end of the song. At her darkest hour ('when the moon's behind the hill') that's when he will demand that sell her soul.

She is probably a struggling artist - poor, working as a barista to pay the bills - and he represents the forces of commerce.

Not sure why, but I always envision Kensington Market whenever I hear this song. Your description seems to enforce that vision to me.

[andrew sharpe]

She is probably a struggling artist - poor, working as a barista to pay the bills - and he represents the forces of commerce.

I like this extension.

I could give or take the song though. Really the only thing of note, by Hip standards, is Johnny's almost skiffle-style of drumming. It sounds almost programmed. The muted, hypnotic repetitive beat serves the song well. Johnny has the rep of being nothing more than a bar band drummer but the dude is actually pretty versatile...and a great songwriter too (apparently most of Pigeon Camera is his).

[loach]

I always felt Coffee Girl was just a straight up fictional character portrait. I imagined Gord being in a coffee shop and making up a story in his head about the barista.

I always pictured Coffee Girl being about one of his daughters and him losing his artsy daughter to a boy and the flakiness that can come with young love. Similar, I picture Last Recluse being about bicycling with one of his daughters and dealing with their changing maturity.

[andrew sharpe]

I always pictured Coffee Girl being about one of his daughters and him losing his artsy daughter to a boy and the flakiness that can come with young love. Similar, I picture Last Recluse being about bicycling with one of his daughters and dealing with their changing maturity.

Agreed on Last Recluse, to me it's all about the challenges of loving teenagers. I never thought of Coffee Girl as an extension of it...it does make sense that the barista is his daughter, who has left him and is now finding herself in the world...innocence lost, etc. I like this idea loach.

[sean.bonner]

I loved singing 'WOAHHHH-OH' during Frozen live.

Must be one of the only Hip tunes with a 3/4 signature? I can't think of any others off the top of my head.

[Killer Whale Tank]

I always saw 'Last Recluse' as involving a daughter as well. It's funny that so many of us made that connection when the song doesn't *really* say anything of the sort. What is it in the lyric that makes us think about this? Is it the "ride and shut up" line - ?

In any case, 'Recluse' is a beautiful, potent song. "The last Canada goose" is a line that should seem almost comical, because geese are comical, but in fact devastates me. The *idea* of the last Canada goose conjures up a world and a Canada hopelessly lost.

[NWOntario]

I was living in Kingston going to Queen's just after it came out which was a great time for me.

That's In Violet Light for me. It's my ghetto album.

I wasn't really a fan when I got to Queen's. By the end of first year I was following the Hip on tour.

[andrew sharpe]

I always saw 'Last Recluse' as involving a daughter as well. It's funny that so many of us made that connection when the song doesn't *really* say anything of the sort. What is it in the lyric that makes us think about this? Is it the "ride and shut up" line - ?

Well, "watch a bomb go off in a young girl's life" does hint at it...and I don't know this for sure, but I have some memory of Gord actually mentioning his daughter in the context of the song. Or maybe I'm just thinking of the video, which shows him biking with a young girl for the boat.

In any case, 'Recluse' is a beautiful, potent song. "The last Canada goose" is a line that should seem almost comical, because geese are comical, but in fact devastates me. The *idea* of the last Canada goose conjures up a world and a Canada hopelessly lost.

Yeah, and HipMuseum covers "the black canoe" pretty well: http://www.hipmuseum.com/recluse.html.

[Moof_Milker]

Another fun way I used to annoy my wife: Hold up the $20 bill, point to the picture on the back, and sing, "the black canoe-ewwww-ewwww" (Sadly, the $20 bill has been designed and the black canoe is gone.)

[potsie]

Great thought, potsie. I agree with almost everything you say here, with two minor exceptions. The first is that "Depression Suite" loses me after the first movement. It's typical of Bob Rock that his big push to "innovate" with the Hip was to get them to do that grandiose 1970s clichee of the rock "suite." It's still more proof that he stopped listening to music around 1983. But in any case, my beef is not with the suite structure as such, as with the tedium the suite generates; its movements are insufficiently varied and, indeed, the last two portions are bits that probably would not have made the cut as songs onto themselves.

I look at The Depression Suite as being the converse of The Dark Canuck, the other instance of the Hip stitching disparate songs together. With Dark Canuck, the whole song is less than the sum of its parts, specifically the second half of the song. The first half almost certainly would not have made the album on its own (it's not better than Problem Bears, Ultra Mundane or Forest Edge), whereas the excitement level in the second half is absolutely red-lined. The first half serves no purpose other than to offer a sonic contrast so we can get excited for the mid-song tempo change. The Dark Canuck would have been a better song without the first half.

However, in contrast to Dark Canuck, The Depression Suite is an example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. I agree that "The Rock" is maybe the only piece that stands solidly on its own as a song, although it wouldn't take much more than a little fine tuning to make "Don't you want to see how it ends" a strong and complete entity. "New Orleans World" is more of a song snippet. Isolated, one is a great song, one is a good song, one is barely a song at all. Together, the three become something greater. The three songs create a vast geographical scope (from Chicago, down to the Gulf of Mexico, and all the way north to Athabasca) and psychological scope (head under the pillow depression, punching the clock in a windowless New Orleans casino, to the uplifting finish of taking charge of life and moving to the Canadian north to make one's fortune) making the song feel operatic.

I agree with your point that the movements are "insufficiently varied", but only in the sense of the music. The guitars, other than Rob's solo on "Don't you want to see how it ends", are nearly inaudible at times and in the first two pieces, fairly uninteresting. I think Johnny's well-suited drumming (particularly in "The Rock") and the strings carry the song musically. Vocally, there is a lot of variance. Gord is by far the star of this song. He uses a wide vocal range, taking it soft and low and then taking it to the top, and both ends are filled with an emotional intensity that is unrivaled elsewhere on the album. I'll admit that "The Rock", for me, has become imbued with a poignancy that wasn't there prior to May 2016. "Saying, are you going through something? Are you going through something? 'Cause I, I, I am too" Gord singing that line now hits me in the deepest recesses of my heart. Especially the way it appears that he is reticent to talk about his 'issue' when he 'stutters' "I, I, I..."

[potsie]

When "Depression" hits my playlist, I usually wait for "Bring on the requisite strangeness". That's where the song truly begins.

I love that part as well, but the song for me begins on the very first line. That's not a very profound statement on my part, but "Under the pillow" is a great image and opening line. If you are going to call a song "The Depression Suite", what better image of burying one's head under the pillow, unable to face the 'noise' of the outside world. In fact that whole first verse is fantastic:

Under the pillow
I bury my head and try and shut Chicago out
As it turns out, there's a whole other world of sounds
Of perfect fifths, low skids, and Arctic howls

The idea of 'other noises' including such a wide range sounds as perfect fifths (power chords, or otherwise), the helicopter runner/skid sliding across grass, the howl of an arctic wolf... great imagery.

[hotmetal401]

I was living in Kingston going to Queen's just after it came out which was a great time for me.

That's In Violet Light for me. It's my ghetto album.

I wasn't really a fan when I got to Queen's. By the end of first year I was following the Hip on tour.

IVL was my Queen's ghetto album too actually, living about a block away from a certain long-haired guitarist.

I'm among the few that think this might be their best album released between 2000 and 2010. Arguably, it's because this is the album where I can put myself in the songs more than any other Hip album. The imagery is just so vivid. Living near a nuclear reactor; the server you have a crush on; the defeat of a dead-end job in a depressed part of the world... this entire album could be one song called Love Is A Curse, because there isn't a lot of happiness going on here.

I wasn't in the best of spots myself. I had just gone through a miserable break up with a girl who lived on the Speed River; it's like my entire previous year had been soundtracked by my favourite band. No album they put out before spoke to me like this one; nothing that followed did either.

Certainly not their best, but in my eyes, their most underappreciated.

Other insights:

Right before Christmas, I was flipping around on Sirius XM and I swore I heard the intro to Morning Moon coming on one of the classic rock channels. "Hmm," I thought. "I guess GD's death is putting a couple of tunes into new rotations." I was dead wrong. It was Helplessly Hoping by CSN. If you haven't compared the two intros lately, give them a spin.

The Rock, from the Depression Suite, is the overarching highlight for me. "Are you going through something?" The depth of that song based around such a simple line still gives me chills.

The tour was a stunner. I had never been as drunk at a show as I was in Boston, as angry at a crowd as I was in Wiarton, as soaking wet as I was in Rochester and as giddily happy (on my birthday, no less) as I was on the first night in Hamilton.