http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakin...67382.html
REVIEW:
Tragically Hip play intimate show
By: Rob Williams
Even though it was Labour Day, the Tragically Hip were working in Winnipeg Monday night.
Or you could say it was their music at work, to steal a song title from the Kingston, Ont., quintet.
Canada’s unofficial band capped off the last long weekend of the summer with the first of a four-night stand at the Centennial Concert Hall in front of 2,100 fans who got a chance to see the iconic group play a more intimate show than normal.
With no fanfare, the unassuming band walked on stage, waved to the crowd and launched into the nine-and-a-half minute epic The Depression Suite, off their new album, We Are the Same, in front of a simple backdrop of LED lights and lighting rigs.
Not that they need any visual gimmickry to enhance their show. With a dozen albums and such devoted fans, they can just focus on the music. The Tragically Hip are always a dependable live band — having seen them many times over the past 20 years I have never seen them have an off night — and Monday’s show was no exception. It helps that they have frontman Gord Downie too. When he performs, he becomes possessed by the music, roaming the stage making spastic moves, crouching, jumping, pointing and kicking when he doesn’t have a guitar in his hand. He even helped wipe sweat off his bandmates.
With Downie in top form handling the moves and the between song banter — he was in a good mood and was very chatty between songs, asking the crowd if they were back at school, talking about polar bears in Churchill and saying how happy he was to be in the home of the Weakerthans, among other things — guitarists Rob Baker and Paul Langlois took care of the group’s distinctive riffs, while the rhythm section of bassist Gord Sinclair, the next most animated member of the band, and drummer Johnny Fay kept everyone locked into the groove. Ottawa singer-songwriter Jim Bryson handled keyboard duties.
The crowd remained seated for the opening number as Downie stalked the stage speaking and singing lyrics to the three-part song, but the entire audience rose for the next one, the classic New Orleans is Sinking, off the Hip’s 1989 breakthrough album, Up to Here, which features what must be one of the most recognizable guitar riffs in the Can-rock canon.
"Welcome to the old barn," Downie joked by way of an introduction before introducing Yer Not the Ocean with the amusingly cryptic: "Well Winnipeg, you’re not the ocean yet. Don’t despair."
Despair was something totally absent in the venue as the group performed two sets totaling more than two hours. The first hour featured a mix of hits and album cuts from most of their career with old favourites like Ahead By a Century, Poets and an extended At the Hundreth Meridian with new and more recent songs Morning Moon, Gus: the Polar Bear From Central Park, Family Band and Love is a First.
They took a 20-minute break an hour into the show and returned in an intimate semicircle with Baker, Langlois and Sinclair seated to run through a few mellow selections: the locally flavoured Thompson Girl, the new Coffee Girl and Wheat Kings, a song about the 1969 murder of Gail Miller and the wrongful conviction of David Milgaard.
After the subdued beginning to the second half, the guitarists and bassist rose for the anthemic Grace, Too, slowed things down again for The Last Recluse then had the audience members dancing in their seats for the keyboard driven In View and swaying for Bobcaygeon, which came just as press time did.
The Hip continue their Winnipeg stand with three more shows at the concert hall Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. They are playing a different set each night. There is no opening act.
Let's make sure that doesn't happen again!
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