[potsie]

Like many here I played the Hip non-stop for months after receiving that sad email the end of May. There was rarely a day that passed where I didn't listen to at least one of the albums. During this time I started to listen in a different way. I listened uncritically. I became more appreciative of the albums from the past 16 years that I could find faults in before. Every album in the catalogue rose in greatness for me (although it's hard to imagine how much higher the 90's output could go), except for one: Music at Work. This is the only album that my love didn't grow for this past summer.

Music at Work has fallen to the bottom of my list over the past few months and that's really the only thing that's changed in my personal rankings. It was middle of the pack before but I dare say I now like NFPA (my previous last place finisher) even more than M@W. It's not that I like M@W less than I did 6 months ago, it's that I like everything else more. It is the only album that wouldn't place a song on my top 50 Hip song list. It is not an easy listen from start to finish and, if I'm going to kick it while it's down, it has by far the worst cover art of any Hip album. Chopping about four songs off of it would improve the listening experience, but even then it would still be an uneven affair. Maybe some day I'll come around to it, but it didn't happen this summer.

[andrew sharpe]

Agreed, but at least the video rules:

[youtube]BN9i5Z01kFI[/youtube]

My favourite moment is when GD hands GS a paper from the copier (1:44). I chuckle every time.

[loach]

Music@Work has perhaps the highest number of songs that I'm inclined to hit the skip button when I'm shuffling the entire Hip catalogue.

But it also has some songs that I just love: Lake Fever, The Completists, Putting Down, Stay, Music @ Work; and others that I like quite a bit: Toronto #4, The Bear, As I Wind Down. As others have said, I find it is a real hit-and-miss album. Could have used some paring down and fine-tuning prior to its release, I guess.

My appreciation for NFPA and WC has really increased over the last few months. But the high points of M@W still has me giving it a slight edge over those two albums in my ranking. That said, I don't have any album that I actually dislike and would prefer to not listen to.

[potsie]

IVL is a mystery to me. Everytime I rank the albums I immediately put it at the bottom. And then every time I hear it, I remember I love it. I love the album cover, I love the videos, ...

I agree that it is an excellent cover. The only one that provides a better visual depiction of the atmospherics of the music inside is Day for Night. IVL is second in this regard. Can you imagine Day for Night or IVL with a yellow album cover? White? No way! Those two album covers fit perfectly.

[Moof_Milker]

Great thread. I attempted to rank the albums myself, but never could settle on an answer. Too hard for me to be objective - each album comes at a different year in my life, some more formative than others. Also, I truly do love them all. I have always been interested/fascinated in how each new album differs from the previous album. I'm sure it's a mix of conscious and unconscious decision making (amongst a million other variables) that affects those album-to-album changes, but it always gets me speculating. Like many of you here, I always thought Music@Work had a little too much fat on it. It likely would have been better regarded if it was, say, 11 or 12 songs instead of 14. (...the question is, which 2 or 3 songs would you cut?). Then IVL comes out, which I interpreted, album-wise, as a response to the fatty W@M: only 11 songs, 3 excellent songs on the cutting room floor (Problem Bears, Forest Edge, Ultra Mundane), and a VERY tight, glossy finisher (The Dark Canuck). The difference in production and sequencing of those albums is something I think about a lot.

For record, Music@Work definitely has the worst album cover (...has there ever been an explanation from the band about that one? To me, it looks like something I would have made on a school computer using Corel Draw back in the 90s. For that band that set the bar very high when it comes to its aesthetics, that one feels out of place to me)..but it's not my least favourite album. That honour likely goes to NFPA, the album I revisit the least.

[andrew sharpe]

For record, Music@Work definitely has the worst album cover

Agreed, it's a mess. I've always chalked it up to Bobby being a highfalutin fine arts student with a taste for far out abstract bs that a knuckle dragger like myself would never get.

My favourite album cover is Trouble At the Henhouse.

[sean.bonner]

For record, Music@Work definitely has the worst album cover

I love it! I remember seeing a GIF at one point showing the layers being added one-by-one for the cover. Maybe that helped in my appreciation of it.

[direwolf74]

M@W is a very uneven album, but I still like it. Maybe if the Hip were a little more ruthless with their editing and shaved it down to 10 or 11 tracks, it might have been a better album. According to Paul they recorded a shit load of songs during those sessions and were entertaining the idea of a double album at one point. I'd be very curious to hear some of the material that was left out.

Here's how it breaks down for me:

Love:
MM@W, Tiger the Lion, Lake Fever, Puttin' Down, Toronto #4, The Bear, Train Overnight, Sharks

Indifferent:
Stay, The Bastard, The Completists, As I Wind Down the Pines

Dislike:
Freak Turbulence, Wild Mountain Honey (although I do like Johnny's thunderous drums on this song. Very John Bonham-esque).

And I agree. Worst album cover of the Hip's entire discography.

[potsie]

M@W is a very uneven album, but I still like it. Maybe if the Hip were a little more ruthless with their editing and shaved it down to 10 or 11 tracks, it might have been a better album. According to Paul they recorded a shit load of songs during those sessions and were entertaining the idea of a double album at one point. I'd be very curious to hear some of the material that was left out.

Here's how it breaks down for me:

Love:
MM@W, Tiger the Lion, Lake Fever, Puttin' Down, Toronto #4, The Bear, Train Overnight, Sharks

Indifferent:
Stay, The Bastard, The Completists, As I Wind Down the Pines

Dislike:
Freak Turbulence, Wild Mountain Honey (although I do like Johnny's thunderous drums on this song. Very John Bonham-esque).

And I agree. Worst album cover of the Hip's entire discography.

I thought I'd apply your categories to my view of M@W:

Love: MM@W (I love how this song kicks off - and Johnny hits 'em pretty hard on this one as well), Sharks, Tiger the Lion, The Bastard

Indifferent:
Lake Fever (almost too breezy, if that could be a thing), Stay, Toronto #4, Puttin' Down, Train Overnight

Dislike (and this is relative, my comparative being other songs in the Hip catalogue, since "dislike" is almost too strong a word for any Hip song - I can't even apply it to "I'm a Werewolf, Baby"):
Wild Mountain Honey (too jarring, and not in good "The Drop Off" kind of way), As I Wind Down the Pines (flat), Freak Turbulence (I like the music, the lyrics and melody not so much), The Completists, The Bear

I think if I could sum up my feelings on M@W in one sentence it would be, "Short on melody and high on lyric density". This seems to represent a time period where Gord maybe started to view himself as a poet as much as a song writer. As I look at the M@W line-up, I wonder if some of these songs would have suited the more poetic Coke Machine Glow which was recorded around the same time. As I Wind Down the Pines is an obvious one, but maybe The Bear, Stay, and Toronto #4 as well. Having the The Dinner is Ruined/The Country of Miracles play these in the more low-fi setting of CMG may have suited these songs better. So if I could do some editing, I think I would toss about 5 of the M@W songs to a Gord solo album and then sort through the M@W left-over pile that Paul talks about and see if I could find 4 or 5 gems to replace them.

[edgoffin]

Here's how it breaks down for me:

Love:
MM@W, Tiger the Lion, Lake Fever, Puttin' Down, Toronto #4, The Bear, Train Overnight, Sharks

Indifferent:
Stay, The Bastard, The Completists, As I Wind Down the Pines

Dislike:
Freak Turbulence, Wild Mountain Honey (although I do like Johnny's thunderous drums on this song. Very John Bonham-esque).

I agree on that breakdown but move Stay up to the top group. It's the oddity album for me in their collection, where usually my favorite tracks are in the closing 1 or 2.

[Moof_Milker]

Have you noticed the trend in the past decade years or so of closing albums with bigger songs? Look at their 90s closers:
UTH = Opiated
RA = Last of the Unplucked Gems
FC = Eldorado
DFN = Impossibilum
TATH = Put It Off
PP = Emporor Penguin
M@W = As I Wind Down the Pines

then we get...

IVL = The Dark Canuck
IBE = Goodnight Josephine (...back to a softer song)
WC = World Container
WATS = Country Days
NFPA = Goodnight Attawapaskat
MMP = Machine

The general trend as of late has been to close with these bigger songs. Again, conscious or unconscious choice to do so? Personally, I love the trend (...and don't get me wrong there's flawless sequencing on those 90s albums - can you imagine Road Apples ending with anything other than Last of the Unplucked Gems?). I think Gord D was right to have Machine as the last song on MMP though - I believe Rob said this was Gord's idea. So, maybe with the finish bigger model, I might order M@W like this:

My Music At Work
Tiger the Lion
Puttin' Down
Stay
The Bastard
Freak Turbulence
The Completists
Sharks
Toronto #4
Lake Fever

(...and leave these off)
The Bear
Wild Mountain Honey
Train Overnight
As I Wind Down The Pines

Certainly a tighter album. But better? Better received? All highly subjective and hypothetical of course. Ultimately, I'm fine with M@W as it is. Just fun to consider such things. It's what we fans do

[potsie]

The general trend as of late has been to close with these bigger songs. Again, conscious or unconscious choice to do so? Personally, I love the trend (...and don't get me wrong there's flawless sequencing on those 90s albums - can you imagine Road Apples ending with anything other than Last of the Unplucked Gems?). I think Gord D was right to have Machine as the last song on MMP though - I believe Rob said this was Gord's idea. So, maybe with the finish bigger model, I might order M@W like this:

My Music At Work
Tiger the Lion
Puttin' Down
Stay
The Bastard
Freak Turbulence
The Completists
Sharks
Toronto #4
Lake Fever

(...and leave these off)
The Bear
Wild Mountain Honey
Train Overnight
As I Wind Down The Pines

Certainly a tighter album. But better? Better received? All highly subjective and hypothetical of course. Ultimately, I'm fine with M@W as it is. Just fun to consider such things. It's what we fans do

I like your version of M@W. The only change I'd make would be to swap out The Completists for Train Overnight. As you stated, definitely a tighter album and a better listen. I would have been happy for the four tunes left on the cutting room floor to turn up in a box set somewhere in 2024.

[loach]

Interesting to see the different views on songs at M@W. I've always loved the Completists, so it's total heresy to see someone want to swap it out but leave The Bastard and Freak Turbulence in.

I guess time and place in our lives when these albums come out influence our tastes. I was trying to write a masters thesis when M@W came out and was listening to it a lot as I sat at the computer typing away. At that time, I associated being a completist as what I'd be when I finally completed the damn thing. I realize now that is not actually the definition of a 'completist', but I still think of that when I hear the song.

[rocketsan22]

M@W will always have a special place in my heart as it was an album some of us were lucky to acquire it months before the actual release. By the time it released and they toured it, the songs even before we knew the titles were ingrained in my heart. Saw many shows that tour so it is held in a high regard.

[andrew sharpe]

I think Gord D was right to have Machine as the last song on MMP though - I believe Rob said this was Gord's idea.

Did he say that? I remember one of them saying Man and Machine were originally one song and they decided to split it and use the parts as bookends for the album, but I don't remember reading that it was GD's idea. I know they did say Machine was the original choice for the first single but GD argued for Possessed.