There will be tears
Pop critic Ben Rayner analyzes The Hip’s tour set lists,
If you’ve ever caught the Tragically Hip on consecutive nights, you know you’re unlikely to hear the same set of songs twice in a row.
On some evenings, you might catch Gord Downie et al in a generous mood, firing off hit after hit to the delight of the crowd, while on others you’ll find the band diving deep into the stoned, weird and cosmic portions of its 14-album catalogue. That’s what keeps us coming back to the Tragically Hip: You never know what you’re going to get.
Well, this time we don’t get to go back. This is it. Downie has bravely announced that he has terminal brain cancer, so the band’s current cross-Canada tour will more than likely be its last.
But rather than contemplate something we need not contemplate now, let’s find some distraction in analyzing the set lists from the first four shows on this tour — in Victoria on July 22, Vancouver on July 24 and 26, and Edmonton on July 28 — for some idea of what we might expect when the Hip arrives in Toronto for three shows at the Air Canada Centre on Aug.10,12 and14 on the way to the band’s final bow in hometown Kingston, Ont., on Aug. 20.
This is it. There will be ‘album pockets’ Thus far, the Man Machine Poem tour has cycled through several albums from various stages in the Hip’s career each night, clumping the songs together so the crowd (and the band) has time to settle properly into the appropriate time period.
The upshot? You can expect to hear a few of the “biggies” in bulk — choose from 1991’s Road Apples, 1992’s Fully Completely, 1994’s Day for Night, 1996’s Trouble at the Henhouse, 1998’s Phantom Power and the band’s first full-length, 1989’s Up to Here — but you’ll also get to revisit a couple of the worthy latter-years Hip albums you might have neglected.
Man Machine Poem will get a fair shake The Hip could easily have turned this last trans-Canada jaunt into a greatest-hits marathon, but they’re rightly giving their enigmatic new album a prominent airing every night.
This would be one of the more contemplative stretches of the performance, as Man Machine Poem often hearkens back to the patient, drifting, psychedelic headspaces of Day for Night and Trouble at the Henhouse.
Do yourself a favour and save the beer run for the intermission, though; there are some lovely tunes on the new album.
“In a World Possessed by the Human Mind” has an appealingly fat, riffy chug and “Machine” is gnarly and even a bit funky by Hip standards.
“In Sarnia,” meanwhile, is a good excuse for Gord to wail a bit. Which is what we all want on this tour. There will be tears There would be tears anyway, of course, but the first four performances on this tour have been peppered with ballads that provide a little more space for getting into one’s own head.
These have, no doubt, been the hardest moments of the 21⁄ 2- hour show to get through; moments where it was probably advisable to hold someone close and think about how we all eventually lose the ones we love.
The capacious “What Blue” and the resigned “Tired as F---” from Man Machine Poem get to you. “Bobcaygeon” and “Long Time Running” are impossibly weepy in context; “Wheat Kings” even more plaintive than usual.
“Scared” emerged in Edmonton and it must have been devastating. I get devastated just thinking about it. Bring tissues. Bring love.