[skippy the wonder dog]

There’s a Dylan reference in it for christsakes.

Actually, I'm not sure there is. I can't see what it refers to. More a matter of dropping the name. But that's neither here nor there.

The sad thing about this thread, Chris, is that nobody has actually said they don't like the songs, and only kwt seems to be universally down on the album as one of the band's worst. Yet many of the participants seem to live in a world where if you don't like the production, you must hate the album, the songs, and probably even the band.

I can appreciate that people who like Queen would like World Container (the song). But I can't stand Queen, so there you go. As I said elsewhere, I'll probably like that song much better when they play it live. But as it stands, I don't enjoy the album itself. People who do like the album, well, lucky them.

It's not like I'm sitting around embittered with nothing to listen to. I still have about 24 hrs worth of bootlegs I haven't heard yet.

[Dr. J]

Thanks, Chris, for the thoughtful post :thumb:

[Summiteer]

Beautiful Post Chris, you summed it all up for me, I LOVE THIS ALBUM TOO, I think I'm going to print off what you wrote, that was great man :thumb: :thumb: :thumb:

[Sam]

There hasn't been anything sufficiently interesting around here to compel me to post since I was inexplicably called a liar a few weeks back, but I have to say - good post, Chris. You summed up most of my feelings about World Container, too.

[Killer Whale Tank]

Ya know, even I - apparently an outlier, although Skippy and I actually seem to be in complete agreement on this - have said that those are, in many cases, great SONGS. For the millionth time, all I'm saying is that I find the way that most of the songs are executed on the album to be excruciatingly overblown, bludgeoning all genuine emotion out of them, in favour of histrionics and overproduced hysteria. Therefore, I don't like the record.

No need to feel sorry for me, either...there's a new Dylan CD, there's Gillian Welch albums, there's all kinds of great stuff. I'll survive the lack of a listenable new Hip CD. :lol:

Note, also, that my original post specified 'The Kids Don't get It' as the one moment where the execution is 100% bang on. That's because that particuar song obviously demands a demented punk-band treatment. The rest are, as I said earlier, mostly delicacies crushed by pound after pound of sonic ketchup.

And it's true, ya know, that most terrific artists sooner or later make an album marred by awful production decisions. The Beatles made 'Let It Be.' The Hip made 'Fully Completely,' an album whose production was so problematic that they re-mixed that material for re-release. (I wonder what they said about it at the time? Probably NOT that it sucked). Elvis Costello had 'Goodbye Cruel World.' Like the Hip, he went around promoting it and praising it effusively, as among his best work, at the time. Twenty years on, he was repudiating it as a debacle that ruined a bunch of promising songs. So even the best artists can be totally deluded by their own work (to say nothing of the fact that a band's statements when they're *in the midst of a massive promotion push for a new album* can NOT be taken as the last word on its merits).

[redhill]

Lots of good posts in this thread...other than the bickering

Personally I have no issues with the band letting Mr Rock take the helm on the trip to create this disc.
As Chris pointed out , and with all those before them , they need to be played and played and played....even with the streaming from The Hip dot com , it's really too early to be judging.

And for me , a new album is merely the birth...

Hearing them live will be the proof in the pudding

And after the CBC gig....I'm in line for 2nds at the dessert table

[direwolf74]

Having attempted to absorb some of this to-ing and fro-ing, I post again in this thread to reflect:

I feel sad for Hip fans (and anyone who spends valuable minutes of their lives posting and reading here is a hip fan, whether they criticize the album or gush in praise of it) who aren't enjoying this album -- you wait with eager anticipation for two-plus years for the new record to drop, and even though they've given a taste of everything that makes them great and enough new twists to keep it fresh and enough poetry and bafflement to keep you head scratching, you don't like it.

You don't like Yer Not the Ocean, an anthem of personal/political/ metaphysical defiance. You don't jack up the volume for the part that goes ".... and take and take and take ..." and you don't get a little shiver at the image, poetry, and sound of "you're up to my chin/ you're not coming in"

You're blah on The Lonely End of the Rink -- which is a hip hockey song that is so unashamed to be a hip hockey song it makes us blush with a mixture of pride and embarrassment. And it just rawks. It just wears it's baseball cap backward and rawks.

You excoriate In View because it is a stupid song with plinky keyboards. But why, damn it, why can't you stop humming it. Why can't you actually skip Track 3?

You're okay with Fly because, well it soars and that idea about "love is to try or die trying" is just simple and complex enough to remind you of why Gord Downie at the best of times is all Gord Downie. Moonbeam, Ontario must make you smile, at least a little.

Luv (Sic) -- you think the title is too cute by half. Gord dangles something about Northrop Frye in the liner notes that has the Hipbase scurrying to peg his arcana, and you don't think "this is classic -- moody grove peculiarly interlaced with heightened vocabularly -- with a twist of the new lime -- Gord's acceptance of introspection." Instead you think ... Ah, I don't know what you think. Something about Bob Rock.

The Kids don't get it. Just how hard it is. The gushers and praisers are like the song -- guts split open and splayed like roadkill on the highway, traffic copters whirling overhead. They brought out all the frying pans from Freak Turbulence, Heart of the Melt, and No Threat and just tried to knock us silly. The critics don't get it. Don't want it.

Pretend. To you it's not the new Flamenco. It's not the new Hip wedding song. It's overproduced garbage with recycled lyrics for the green bin of the world container. Too bad you can't join us, the gushers and the praisers, in the waltz. Come on, you can pretend -- yes you can, yes you can, yes you can.

It comes to Last Night You Had a Lengthy Title. It leaves you featureless and freezing. They've glommed it with noise. I feel bad for you, for the band, for jilted lovers everywhere – why don’t you love the Hip like you used to? I’m confused, I awake in cold sweat.

Next up, you won’t be caught dead swimming past The Drop Off. The band is beating up on us again with musical and lyrical punches to the solar plexus and then a big music-stops Gord Downie uppercut to the jaw. The second time “iridescence” has made itself iridescent in a Hip song. But no swimming past the drop off for you. You’ll be waiting for us on the beach feeling sorry for yourself, the song, Bob Rock, the music industry, the Hip, or some other aural defectiveness that has galled you. Too clumsy? Too noisy? To instrument-y? Too much Gord, not enough Paul? More me less you? C’mon, just enjoy it. There’s a Dylan reference in it for christsakes.

My God, you don’t even like Family Band. Even the Hip Saga – making some honest rock and roll and going virtually unnoticed; gripping the city but not hitting the town – reduced to a three-and-a-half minute ditty, complete with Johnny’s kick drum and the video-possibility of Gord Sinclair and Rob Baker dressed in exterminator suits fumigating an elevator, leaves you nonplussed. Yes, maybe you would have produced it differently if the Hip had hired you, maybe it would have been all As I Wind Down the Pines redux, or, the nightmare scenario, it would have been all Evelyn all the time. But it’s not, so relax. The things been out for a week and you’ve already shelved it. Even if in the end, you’re a shade shy of truly loving it, give it thirteen or fourteen dozen listens like you would any Hip album and then rank it low on your list after M@W or IVL or whatever else you got all worked up about in 199? or 200?. You’ll probably end up admitting that it’s better than a lot of other non-Hip stuff out there, right. So, enough with the sack cloth and peel back the despair – Gord should quit; the band should quit; Bob Rock should quit; I should quit; you should quit; the Dose reviewer should quit. Annihilate a little later.

And finally – there’s a World Container with your name all over it. Yes, they Queen-tarted it up. Yes, Bob Rock has personally insulted us all by intimating that it could have been Gord alone in a room with a bare lightbulb and that fold-up guitar on which he was strumming Springtime in Vienna in MAv’s hotel room. It could have been Gord doing a spoken word piece. It could have been three minutes of introspective silence and then a gunshot. It could have been monkeys at a typewriter. But it’s not – it’s a glorious exultation of sound (“oh no it isn’t!!”); it’s the family band that Gord was singing about. It’s a bright wash of music because it’s a World Container and it contains everything, including a billion ways to go berserk and a billion production foibles to go berserk about. I feel bad that you won’t sing with me when I crank my car stereo to 900 and look like a complete idiot driving up Yonge Street shouting, not singing, “Out past the ‘No Attractions Past This Point’ sign!” revelling in a brand spanking new album from my favouritest band in the universe, complete with a orchestral final number that brings the house down.

All these songs are flaws in progress and you would have liked something different. That’s fair. You’re entitled to your criticism – it’s thoughtful, if caustic. I guess what compels me to write at length and risk stinging rebukes that I’ve missed the point of your criticism entirely, is that I think it is a really good album. I eagerly wait for two years for each new Hip album and this has been well worth the wait for me. So, since you are Hip fans and I imagine that you were probably eager like me for the new material, I am saddened, and of course, confused, by your deflation with the album, particularly comments that you’ve already shelved it or will probably only give it a few spins. Like others, I imagine, I get my back up because the tenor of your criticism, like that of the Dose writer, is so dismissive. We’re all fans here, and this is World Container Week. We won’t get another chance for brand new material for at least another two years, so, you know, let’s enjoy 11 more songs.

ct

What he said.

:thumb:

[tragicallysteve]

Chris, great post. :thumb: Made me forget what I was even fighting about.

Oh yeah... now I remember. One last thing, then I'll drop it. Skippy, if you look back to my first post in this thread, I wasn't even talking to you. That wasn't directed towards you at all. It was generic advice that just happened to be posted after a comment you posted. Then you went off with your "dipshit" newsflash.

Take it easy.



And to everyone else, I'm sorry. It is officially dropped.

Again, Chris. Loved the post. Can't get enough of it.

[VioletLite]

Ah well to each his own..........I will remember to have a drink for Ben whats-his-name on November 4th at the Commodore when I AM ROCKING OUT TO THE BEST BAND IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE!!!!!!!!!
Thanks for yer input, Ben - it matters.... :lol:

[Killer Whale Tank]

And, oh yes, just in reply to Chris's thoughtful post...

All fair observations. I could respond with a track-by-track analysis, but why cause people further distress? I do want to say that I can't see listening to this record, say, 20 times and learning to like it, or a lightbulb going on and I suddenly 'get' it. There's much to 'get' in these songs, as songs, yeah. But there's NOTHING to 'get' about the way they're decked out, which is standard tasteless 'overblown rock production,' and which I loathe. Why I would submit myself to the same punishment over and over is beyond me. I'm too old for that, life's too short.

[The Horrible Esthete]

This is great.

It never ceases to amaze me how the criticism of anything Hip leads to embittered retaliation, and accusations of "arrogance".

Yes, this is a "fan board". More specifically, it is a forum within the "Tragically Hip Databse". There are no subfolders in the "Tragically Hip Discussion" entitled "Album Praise" and "Album Criticism".

Where might someone express their personal criticism of World Container other than the most prominent online forum devoted to TTH, where one can be sure to find others with knowledge (and thus, opinions) of its works? In truth, this is the best place for it, and this discussion is one of the more substantive and intriguing to be found 'round these parts.

It is refreshing to see some actual discussion of the perceived merits & flaws of TTH material amidst the superfluous exultation.

I see nothing objectionable in the manner and content of KWT's critique. As a matter of fact, questioning whether the songs on WC suffer from over-production is as elemental as criticism can be when evaluating a studio recording.

[sundin13]

There are no subfolders in the "Tragically Hip Discussion" entitled "Album Praise" and "Album Criticism".

How about some middle ground -- how about "Drooling Fan Boys" and "Cranky Bitchers"?

Just trying to lighten this up a little -- it's Friday after all.

[tragicallysteve]

There are no subfolders in the "Tragically Hip Discussion" entitled "Album Praise" and "Album Criticism".

How about some middle ground -- how about "Drooling Fan Boys" and "Cranky Bitchers"?

Just trying to lighten this up a little -- it's Friday after all.

Sorry. I'll try to keep my drooling to a minimum :lol:

[Bosman]

Another thought by Downie: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://entertainment1.sympatico.msn.ca/Tragically+Hip+plus+producer+Bob+Rock+equals+hockey+to+a+calypso+beat/Music/MusicNews/ContentPosting.aspx?isfa=1&newsitemid=39002025&feedname=CP-ENTERTAINMENT&show=True&number=5&showbyline=True&subtitle=&detect=&abc=">http://entertainment1.sympatico.msn.ca/ ... tect=&abc=</a><!-- m -->

No, I'm not trying to stir the pot here. Simply more thoughts by Downie on the album... (and yes, B Rock is plastered about). Just maybe another glimpse into why this album sounds the way it does - and why it's so different.