[edgoffin]

Anyone up for returning to these topics -- I've found most of the commentary really interesting, have learned some things about the past albums.

Trouble at the Henhouse
Release May 1996

Gift Shop
Springtime in Vienna
Ahead by a Century
Don't Wake Daddy
Flamenco
700 Ft. Ceiling
Butts Wigglin
Apartment Song
Coconut Cream
Let's Stay Engaged
Sherpa
Put It Off

The first band produced album, along with Mark Vreeken along for the ride after DFN. Had not realized that Steven Drake of The Odds mixed the album till I re-read the credits.

This continued my tradition of buying the album the night of release, and then driving around listening to it. DFN was in Kingston, Trouble was in Toronto. Must have bought it on Yonge Street, likely Sam the Record Man or HMV. Gift Shop has been played live the year before a few times, if I recall maybe not in a full state but had heard portions of it on the DFN tour. I recall Butts Wigglin was getting played well in advance of the album, don't if the Kids in the Hall movie was already out.

It's maybe the oddest Hip album for me. The middle section is a perplexing set of songs. 700 Foot Ceiling is maybe the exception, I think they did better similar songs later with Silver Jet, Vapour Trails, and I like the "flooding" references. Butts Wigglin sounds like a typical soundtrack song, but it's actually better than I remember when I listen now. Apartment Song, I like that closing rushed vocally delivery, but the ugly feet line always throws me. Coconut Cream sort of feels like three lyrical ideas forced into the song, possibly a cool riff that doesn't quite match the lyrics.

Countering those, the closing three and the opening five tracks are some of my favorite individual songs. Gift Shop, I always looked forward to that musical crush that hits with "and the pendulum swings". The band in all their power. Springtime was always a live favorite. ABAC was a great song that has taken on more meaning since last year. The intro from Rob in the MMP tour shows was amazing. Anyone have a link to the "dirty version"? I think possibly have it somewhere on a bootleg as an section in NOIS, but can't recall which show.

Daddy is in my top 10 Hip songs. Flamenco was a pretty interesting musical shift at the time, and the continued on that path with numerous subsequent songs (I put it together with songs like The Rules, World Container, and then a lot of M@W). Of all the times I saw it, Gord maybe never sang it better than he did the last show in Ottawa. It was incredible.

Jumping to the back half, Let's Stay Engaged, interesting lyrics (always been puzzled by that last verse). Sherpa, again like Flamenco was a different sound for the band and a great vocal take. Put it Off -- also in my top 10 -- love the slow build, and as a parent can relate to the what I think Gord was getting at (or at the least I'm finding a meaning that relates to me). I hope Erics' Trip sold some extra albums thanks to the reference.

My main memory of this album will be driving to NYC to see a show at Irving Plaza. Night #2 in May (they played a third night in the fall), so a according to the set list amazingly saw Apartment Song, Coconut Cream, and Butts Wigglin all on the same night. I don't think any reappeared after this tour? Clarissa, immortalized on a think a live vault show as "Clarissa, from Chapel Hill North Carolina" was the opener. Irving Plaza has a top balcony around the perimeter (or it did at the time), and the band wives and girlfriends up there. I remember one of them had really little kids at the time, and they were up there with huge headphones on looking down at the stage. Standing in front of the venue, I had a great conversation with a lady from NYC as she tried to understand why so many Canadians were there for this band she'd never heard of.

This era was maybe the band's peak popularity -- multiple nights in Canadian arenas.

[mark]

ABAC was a great song that has taken on more meaning since last year. The intro from Rob in the MMP tour shows was amazing. Anyone have a link to the "dirty version"? I think possibly have it somewhere on a bootleg as an section in NOIS, but can't recall which show.

here you go. Toronto 1995

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[Scotty12]

The gig poster from that show:

Screenshot_20170103-003704.png Size: 1.53 MB  Downloads: 182

Been searching for years to find a white/gold "Birds" 1995 poster (the fan club ticket stubs had the same design, later reprised on Hipeponymous)

Screenshot_20170830-091727.png Size: 2.24 MB  Downloads: 182

Perhaps the decision to have the Odds' Steven Drake mix TATH was made during the 1995 tour?

[cochise]

Just finished university when TATH came out, I can still remember hearing ABAC while packing up to move to Ottawa. In my opinion, this was the album where Gord's song writing skills came to full shine.

After DFN, the sound was a bit unexpected for me, not that I disliked it, just so "not DFN'ish"? It took a few listens to get use to the new vibe/sound, but I ended up falling in love with it. Not on the same scale as DFN, but still one of my favourites. Sure if had a couple duds (cough, cough *Coconut Cream*, cough cough *Butts Wigglin*) but intermixed were some incredible tracks, Sherpa, Apartment Song, Flamenco. All so different than previous, but so strong.

I think Don't Wake Daddy is still my favourite track. As said above, I had just finished university and the line "they can lay their heads on their futon beds so many miles from home, you can teach your children some fashion sense and they fashion some of their own" really connected with me. Here I was, finished university and getting ready to start "real life" after doing just that.

All in all a very good follow up to DFN. Another turn by the boys and Gord's song writing just brought to a whole new level. A very solid album.

[edgoffin]

Been searching for years to find a white/gold "Birds" 1995 poster (the fan club ticket stubs had the same design, later reprised on Hipeponymous)

I bought the Birds poster at the Kingston DFN show -- it was pretty big, as I recall. It made it through a few moves, but got lost somewhere along the way. Too bad, because it was a great poster.

[edgoffin]

One thing I meant to add -- the vinyl reissue of this is great.

[kieffer]

This was the first hip album I ever owned - I was 12 years old or so when it was released (or at least around the time of the release), and I recall being so mesmerized by the album art that I had to have it.
I recall biking down to the local electronics store seeing it - wanting it, biking back to my parents to grab some money to do so, biking back to the store cash in hand, seeing that it was an 'enhanced CD' honestly, no idea to this day what that means but it was a few dollars more than a regular cd, having to bike back home to ask my parents for a few extra bucks, biking back to the store to finally purchase it - and I don't regret it one bit.

Gift Shop - the atmospheric opening of this song, to this day still sends shivers down my spine - I've always felt the performance of this song at Woodstock is one of the greatest things ever
Springtime - the band always seemed to love playing this song live and it always felt like more of a rocker than on the album
ABAC - not too much I could say about this one that hasn't been said, but as edgoffin said, the new opening they added to it on the last tour was awesome, I was legitimately unsure what I was hearing at the first show I made it to on the tour
Daddy - this song (and I also feel the entire album) has some of Gord's strongest lyrics. There are so many great phrases in this one alone. It was used as an opener on for a few 2006 shows I saw and it worked well in that slot.
Flamenco - I think Gord has referred to this as his favourite song?
700ft - Ashamed to admit I didn't really pick up on the fact that this is a hockey song, or at least a song with hockey references until a few years back - love this tune
Butts - I've heard it on bootlegs but never saw it performed live, it's a song I want to like more than I do, however I found myself quite impressed by it recently
Apartment - fell in love with this song the first time I heard it, the structure of the song with the changing repeated words instantly jumped out at me
Coconut Cream - looking forward to other's thoughts and insights on this one, as I have never connected with this one
Engaged - I feel like these last three songs are the best closers, but also most underrated (or at least less spoken about songs) in the band's catalog. We might be late, but we won't be early
Sherpa - I was lucky enough to be at the fort york show where the band played 38yrs old for the first time in ages - it was incredible, but I think getting to hear Sherpa for the first time live was the best part of that unbelievable show. "We said we must be friends or dieAnd we've died a thousand times since then" one of the Gord's greatest lines
Put it Off - would kill to have heard this one live - I think it got included in some NOIS or 100th jams prior to being released.

This album for me is always top 1 or 2 - if only I would have been old enough to catch some shows on this tour

[potsie]

Flamenco - I think Gord has referred to this as his favourite song?

You were right on the album, and the album side, but I believe he is on record as stating that Springtime is his favourite song. The two places I've seen/read this are in an amazing video that was shot in a hotel room in Newfoundland with Gord playing Springtime solo on guitar (would love to see this video again if someone has a link) and in The Globe and Mail interview that was done on his tour bus around the time of the Ottawa and Toronto Secret Path Shows one year ago:

"Downie hates the fact that he can't remember names, which leaves holes in his patter. He gamely tries to fill them. Favourite Dylan album? He can remember the album cover but not the name of Street-Legal. He knows Van Morrison made an album in four days, but no longer recalls that it's Astral Weeks. "Hey," he says to the group when someone asks, "do any of you know what my favourite Hip song is? What's the song, Vienna … " Springtime in Vienna." "Yeah. Good. Jesus."
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I never heard him give reasoning for this choice. Did he feel it was his best set of lyrics? Did it contain his favourite line? Was it the music that he loved or the combination of the music and lyrics? Was it his favourite song to perform live? There are so many follow-up questions that I would have liked to have answered after him making the proclamation that Springtime was his favourite song.

[cochise]

I never heard him give reasoning for this choice. Did he feel it was his best set of lyrics? Did it contain his favourite line? Was it the music that he loved or the combination of the music and lyrics? Was it his favourite song to perform live? There are so many follow-up questions that I would have liked to have answered after him making the proclamation that Springtime was his favourite song.

As mentioned above, I had just moved to Ottawa when the album came out. On the day of release (or maybe the day before) Chez 106 had an album listening special including a live interview with the band in between each song. I remember Gord going fairly into depth about Springtime and it being his favourite off the album, but for the life of me I do not remember details of it now.

Not sure if that was a nationwide special of just through Chez, but would be a great find if a copy of that existed somewhere to re-listen to again.

[kieffer]

Yes. That’s right about springtime being his fav. I do remember that hotel room video and if someone were to repost a link to it that would be appreciated.

I believe I’m maybe thinking of him introducing flamenco as their most beautiful song. Or am I confused with springtime again?

[Moof_Milker]

My first impressions...and lasting impressions...of TATH were greatly influenced by the radio "World Premiere" of the album. If you haven't heard it, or haven't heard it in a while, it's worth a listen - it's a long interview with Gord talking about the songs, and all things Hip. Part 1 is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fg3I6_Uc...g3&index=5
I'm always fascinated with the evolution of the sound from one album to the next. I feel with this one there was definite attempt to lighten the mood in parts (Coconut Cream, Butts Wigglin).

This album also marks the first Hip album where Gord was a father, something that would permeate his lyric writing from this point forward:
Put If Off = references the birth of his first child "I wrote unfriendly things, truly cruel/ On the day that you were born/ To prove that words cannot touch beauty" (<-As per the LTR doc, Gord likes words, he just doesn't trust them..he just likes the way they sound)
Emperor Penguin (2 years later) = toddler stage "I like the tone of your trumpet, come on let's spill some paint/ Let's raise a glass of milk to the end of another day/ And to the kiss that's still intangible, the kids are all right just unmanageable/ They won't do a damn thing you say"
From this point forward, I feel Gord drew a ton of direct inspiration from his perceptive as a father, and I hear words his kids said and conversations he had with his kids in a lot of his lyrics post-TATH. Gord talks about the effects of fatherhood on him at the 4:33minute mark of Part 3 of the album premiere. It all starts here.

And I also believe this was the first album recorded (at least in part) at the newly formed Bathouse recording studio.

[potsie]

One of my memories surrounding the lead-up to the release of TATH is the distinctly negative discussion regarding Downie’s voice that took place on the alt.music.tragically-hip newsgroup. Butts Wigglin’ was the first song to be heard off of TATH when it was released on April 9th, 1996 on the Kids in the Hall “Brain Candy” soundtrack. This set off a wave of rhetoric on the newsgroup (where I was an admittedly infrequent visitor and poster in the mid 1990’s) that culminated with an eviscerating post by the Hip’s road manager Dave Powell. The discussion centred around the thought that Downie’s voice and/or singing style had changed since DFN, and not for the better. This analysis and judgement was based on just one song, but "Wigglin’" and Gord’s relatively flat and restrained approach to singing the song had some people worried about how the upcoming album was going to sound. I wish I could remember exactly what Dave Powell wrote in response (maybe someone else in the age 35+ demographic who was a more frequent visitor to the newsgroup can fill in the details better than me) but he put all the Negative Nancy’s in place with an epic post that had something to do with the impending implosion of the sun. Once ABAC was released as the first official single on April 22nd, it was clear that Gord was going to sound just fine on the album. It all seems so overwrought in hindsight 21 years later, but in those two weeks between the release of Butts and ABAC, there was a lot of worry amongst some fans.

The other thing that was a bit off-putting at the time was the title of the song “Butts Wigglin’”. Anyone who listened to bootlegs in the mid 90’s was aware of Downie’s great sense of humour on stage, but this was not always evident on record. Butts Wigglin’ seemed like such a lightweight title coming on the heels of an album with such dark song titles containing the words like Snarling, Fire, Disaster, Death, Scared, and Emergency. In fact the song titles on TATH, with words like Giftshop, Springtime, Flamenco, Butts and Coconut Cream, seem to indicate a shift in mood of the band to something significantly brighter. And indeed, there is less anxiety and tension on this album as Gord moves from singing about conflict and disaster on DFN to more pleasant reflections on relationships and youth. As Moof_Milker points out above, this is possibly driven by Gord's new found fatherhood. Anyone who has become a father or mother for the first time knows what a life changing event this is and how it can result in a transformation of your world view.

[potsie]

I find the above consensus on the strength of "Don't Wake Daddy" to be interesting. For me, that was the first song on a Hip album that I wanted to skip. There are a few more now on those first few albums (I'm looking at you "We'll Go Too") but at that time my opinion was that the Hip had yet to put out a skippable song. That changed with TATH when I felt there were three that I wanted to skip including "Daddy", "Engaged" and "Coconut Cream". I've since grown to better appreciate just how great "Don't Wake Daddy" is but it wasn't evident to me at the time.

[direwolf74]

I remember buying this album at a long defunct store called Music Baron at midnight on release day, just across the street from Chinook Mall in Calgary. Midnight releases were still a thing in 1996, and Hip mania was at it's peak. I remember there must have been at least 100 people lined up outside the store waiting to buy it. These midnight sales were always so damn fun. There would always be a big cheer when the staff opened the doors, and they'd be playing the album on their sound system as you walked in. I loved the excitement of walking up to the shelf, grabbing a copy, and holding it in your hands for the first time while examining the artwork and tracklist.

I had recorded the album premiere off the radio, so I already had a rough copy of the songs on cassette that I had been driving around with. But it was still exciting to finally rip the cellophane off my official copy, put on the disc, and crank her up while reading along with the lyric booklet. Good times!

To me this album was always very top heavy. It features arguably the strongest opening 5 songs of any Hip record before or since (Gift, Spring, ABAC, Daddy, Flamenco). The album sags a little bit in the middle with half-assed numbers like Butts Wigglin and Coconut Cream. But then it finishes strongly with two of the greatest Hip songs of all time in Sherpa and Put it Off. Despite two or three songs I'm not too keen on, TATH still holds up as one of my favorite Hip albums. And I still stand by my opinion that the studio version of Gift Shop is a beautiful, majestic piece of work that the band was never able to duplicate live. Which is odd, considering most Hip songs are usually better live than on the album. I don't know what it is about that particular version of the song (Robby's solo maybe?), but man, there were obviously magical forces at work on the day they recorded it. I'd say the Hip were at their artistic peak around this time, and they were in the middle of a remarkable run of incredibly solid albums. Their next one would be even better.

[potsie]

One factor that increased my enjoyment of TATH was the timing of the release. Early May, university exams had finished two weeks earlier, and now I had a "summer" album. First thing I did when I got my CD was make a cassette copy for the car. I played the shit out of it that summer.

TATH was also the first CD I ever bought that didn't have a jewel case. I liked the album design but I hated the cardboard. It messed up the uniformity of my CD racks!