Buffalo News review:
A Tragically Hip show is not so much a concert as a communal event. There is, throughout the band’s performances, an air of shared yearning, a striving to break on through to some higher level, with the music acting, on a good night, as a vehicle of transcendence. Friday evening inside the Town Ballroom was one of those good nights.
It didn’t hurt that the Hip arrived in Buffalo for a twonight sold-out run the same week that its beautiful new album, “World Container,” received its U.S. release. The record has given the band a new lease on life, and also has upped what was already a high level of enthusiasm among its fan base, based on the record’s vibrancy, freshness and sense of celebration and joy.
“Joy — that’s a big one for me,” Hip vocalist Gordon Downie told me a few weeks back, and his performance Friday night bore this statement out. Downie is one of rock’s finest lyricists, a writer capable of crafting image-heavy vignettes that manage to be both poetically abstract and deeply human.
He is also one of the most commanding frontmen in the game, a presence fully capable of surrendering to the moment on the concert stage, and even more important, of urging those moments into existence if they don’t happen on their own.
Much of Friday’s set centered on “World Container,” and that material was particularly moving. Downie has said that “a door opened” for the band when it began recording with producer Bob Rock last year, and Downie has done more than stick his foot inside that door — he and the rest of the Hip have stuffed their whole bodies inside this new room.
The music itself has not changed radically, but there is an attention to fine detail, and a willingness to reap the rewards of the band’s strengths by embracing hooks and indulging in gloriously iconic guitar figures, like the one that heralds the arrival of the careening reggaetinged rocker “The Lonely End of the Rink,” which opened the show.
“Courage (For Hugh McLennan)” followed, and by this time, Downie was warmed up and ready to get strange on us. That happened soon after, when “The Drop-Off” showed up, and found the singer performing a rhythmic bit that was far beyond rap, as the band milked the riff for all it was worth. (It was worth plenty.)
No Hip show is complete without surprises, and there were several sprinkled throughout Friday night’s show. The first was “Boots & Hearts,” a swanky acoustic tune that takes the Stones’ “Honky Tonk Woman” and turns it into an eloquent folk-ish piece, replete with brilliant Downie lyrics delineating a torrid break-up. (I think.) “In View,” the first single from “World Container,” tore along on the fast track, and proved itself to be as compelling a ditty on stage as it is on record.
“Bobcaygeon,” one of the Hip’s most evocative tunes, followed, and was as transcendent as “that night in Toronto” it describes. Downie enveloped all of these songs with a disturbed sort of performance art, wiggling his legs like a particularly caffeinated James Brown, or waving his sweat-rag about like a matador in a bullring.
The Hip is not all Downie, of course, and Friday night’s show made indelible the fact that drummer Johnny Fay and bassist Gord Sinclair comprise one of the finest rhythm sections in rock. By keeping it simple, the two act as the Hip’s engine room, supplying a sturdy foundation throughout, but also seizing moments for melodic and rhythmic improvisation. That interplay is echoed by the guitars of Rob Baker and Paul Langlois, who in essence form one 20-fingered guitarist, so intuitively and tightly interwoven is their playing.
“At the Hundredth Meridian” found Downie treating his microphone stand like a Lazy Boy recliner, and turned out to be one of the evening’s highlights in its extended, jammedout form.
The Tragically Hip remains one of the strongest modern rock bands going. More than any other band in its peer group, the Hip takes us all somewhere else, and invites us to stay awhile. It’s nice there. Makes you want to come back again.
Concert Review
The Tragically Hip
Friday night in Town Ballroom. Another performance at 8 tonight. For information, call 852- 3900 or visit <!-- w --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.townballroom.com">www.townballroom.com</a><!-- w -->.
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Dana