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The BIG one.
Definitely my favourite album, start to finish. Grace Too has to be one of the best opening songs of all time on any album ever released.
Although it is not, IMO this is probably the closest the Hip have ever come to doing a "concept" album, all loosely pieced together by the dark, eerie, murky, musty, dampness that just seems to flow its way through every single song.
This was the Hip at the height of their game and peak of their popularity. Its hard to say anything bad about this album, just perfection beginning to end.
On a little side note, I always find it interesting how some artists seem to follow up their "biggest selling album" with one that is head and shoulders above it, yet it never comes close to meeting the same critical success. Day For Night is a prime example of this, stands well above FC, but never received the same accolades and success FC did. Similarly, Bruce Springsteen Tunnel of Love > Born In The USA, Peter Gabriel US >>>>> So, but yet none of them had the legs their previous "critical success" release achieved.
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I need to proclaim my Daredevil love.
It may be my favourite song on the album. And how about that Hiccups -> Daredevil on the Live10 iTunes series
hock: ?!?
Only got it live once (Charlottetown 2006)
2004-12-03 - Saint John/2005-09-03 - Moncton/2006-06-30 - Charlottetown/2006-11-09/10 - Montreal/2007-09-11 - Fredericton/2007-09-13 - Halifax/2007-09-14 - Sydney/2007-09-15 - Charlottetown/2008-06-30 - Charlottetown/2009-05-01/02 - Montreal/2011-06-28 - Moncton/2011-06-30 - Charlottetown/2012-06-30 - Niagara-on-the-Lake/2013-02-01 - Moncton/2013-02-02 - Halifax/2015-01-10 - Toronto/2015-02-20 - Montreal/2015-07-17 - Ottawa/2016-08-18 - Ottawa/2016-08-20 - Kingston
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A masterpiece, plain and simple. No other album in their catalogue reaches the artistic heights of DFN in my opinion (although PP comes really close). It's just brilliant from start to finish, both musically and lyrically. Nothing seems out of place, there's no filler whatsoever, and Mark Howard's production perfectly suits the material. To me it will always feel like a fall/winter kind of album. The songs are kinda cold, kinda murky, a bit gloomy, and full of allusions and references to mortality, death, and darkness:
"Tonight the winter may have missed its mark. You can see your breath in springside park. Coffee colored ice and peeling birch bark, the sound of rushing water in the dark."
"Do you like it inside a barrel, plunging over the falls."
"The nights are getting cold"
"As cold as water through the roof."
"Greasy jungle, metropolis noir."
"I drove down your road, to Hazeldean where I tasted your funeral home's sandwiches and coffee."
"I saw you grieve and grow."
"4,000 men died in the water, and 500 more were thrashing madly, as parasites might in your blood."
"Our conversation is as faint as a sound in my memory, as those fingernails scratching on my hull."
My favorite memory is my buddy and I walking into a 7-11 a couple days before the album officially dropped, and noticing a small box on the counter with the CD and cassette on sale. I guess 7-11 doesn't adhere to street dates? Needless to say we both picked up copies of the CD and were driving around listening to the album 2 days before release. We couldn't believe our luck. I remember being initially thrown off by how different it was from their previous albums, and I didn't love it right off the bat. The album revealed itself slowly, and I had to absorb it for a few weeks before it started to sink in.
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The second last album I was catching up on when I discovered the Hip. Loved UTH, RA kicked my ass, FC I was great but DFN was the defining moment that this was much more than just really good rock music.
Grace, too is a genius piece; from the first time I heard it I was in love and I don't think I could ever get tired of it. So glad to have heard this one last time in Ottawa last year and the performance in Kingston was as emotional a moment as I've ever seen during a musical performance.
Yawning or Snarling has always been one of my favourites and was glad to have seen it on an Evening with tour when Kate Feener sang it with Gord - I was simply in awe; standing there with my mouth agape.
So much fantastic work on this album; dark, melancholy and everything just hangs together so well. A triumphant work that firmly cements the Hip as the greatest Canadian band ever (for me anyway).
Shane
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just listened to this about an hour ago while walking the dog. there is nothing i don't like about it.
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Tonight the winter may have missed its mark;
You can see your breath in Springside Park;
Coffee coloured ice and peeling birch bark;
Sound of rushing water in the dark.
My favourite Hip lines ever...
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The first Hip album I bought on release day - my brother and I drove to the music store together to get it. It was a Saturday.
The last Hip album I think of in terms of Side 1 and Side 2 -- we bought the cassette version. I bought the cd in the spring.
Grace Too and Nautical Disaster are masterpieces...and two of my favourite things ever created by humans.
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First CD I bought with my own money. Got a ride with a university buddy into the city to buy it on release day. Still my favourite album by any band. Everything about it was perfect. Not a single weak track, artwork is perfect, the live show was at its peak, the band were everywhere (MuchMusic, SNL, touring with Rolling Stones and Page & Plant), hell even the merch was among the best it's ever been. This era turned me from fan to fanatic as I started following the band around, joined the alt.music.tragically-hip newsgroup, and started trading live shows by mail.
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The first time I heard Grace was on LBU; to this day, when I hear Gord's intro on the bass (the greatest bass intro ever IMO) I can't help but think/sing:
The sun came up
Shot through the blinds
Today was the day
And I was already behind
The other thing that has always struck me is how well Grace and Fully go together; an almost perfectly seamless transition from one song to the other.
Shane
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I'd love to hear what led to the decision to record Johnny's drums the way they did. It totally sets the mood for the album...tinny and thin, almost mariachi band. Someone must have made quite a leap of faith to go with it but man it turned out amazing.
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A great album. The Hip's heart of darkness.
It's slightly odd to imagine a band at the absolute pinnacle of its commercial achievement being moved to make such a dark record, but hey, creativity works in strange ways. It's also more or less the end of Gord's really "dark" phase as a lyricist; thereafter he would start writing more about relationships and moments of successful or failed connection (as is presaged on 'Emergency' and 'Impossibilium'), with the themes of violence and death receding somewhat. I never enjoyed those newer themes quite as much, notwithstanding masterpieces like 'Ahead by a Century.'
I also don't think every song is as strong as every other song on it. 'Daredevil' and 'Greasy Jungle' always felt to me like a bit of a dip in quality, and 'Emergency' is just not very good.
The other thing with this record is the way it's recorded. It has a tinny quality that is probably NOT what the band would have wanted, in retrospect. It does give the album a certain tonal unity but probably isn't optimal.
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