REVIEW: “Saskadelphia” makes a worthy addition to Gord Downie’s legacy,
Recorded around 1990, collection of outtakes recalls quirky quality
Here’s an unexpected gift from the gods of music: a six-song EP of outtakes featuring previously unheard Tragically Hip music with Gord Downie at the vocal helm.
Recorded during the “Road Apples” era, circa 1990 — the point when the Kingston rockers truly broke through the Canadian Shield of fledgling act indifference to receive the warmest of public embraces as they became a national phenomenon — “Saskadelphia” reverberates with the early quirky quality Hip fans know and love.
During those days, there was less nuance and more attack, with driving beats and barrelling two-guitar rock topped off with Downie’s fervent vocals and intriguing lyrics, always providing a deeper story than what was said on the surface.
The six songs will sound both fresh and familiar: the rumbling guitar riff that opens “Ouch” may bring to mind a related intro of “New Orleans Is Sinking,” while the propelling tour-de-force of “Not Necessary” wields a similar rhythmic hammer to “Blow at High Dough.”
“Just As Well” probably didn’t make “Road Apples” due to the lighthearted atmospheric vibe it shares with “Happy Hour,” although “Happy Hour” certainly offers more gravitas in its subject matter.
“Reformed Baptist Blues,” an older Hip song, is one part rhythmic calamity to two parts blues-drenched rock; “Crack My Spine Like a Whip” is a straight-shootin’ rock ’n’ roller with some great rhythmic undertow offering support for some great riffs and solos. “Montreal” — the lone live track taken from a 2000 performance at the city’s Bell Centre on the 11th anniversary of the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre — finds Downie announcing that the band would like to do a song about “the identification process,” a tune that’s more contemplative than anything else on the album.
It all breezes by fairly quickly at about 18 minutes, but unlike many “outtake” projects where the material flirts with inferiority, “Saskadelphia” — actually the working title of “Road Apples” before a record executive kiboshed it — gloriously holds its own.
Whether this fulfils your collection as a completist or a hunger to hear the Tragically Hip in its prime formative years, “Saskadelphia” is the promising amuse bouche in what will hopefully be a never-ending rollout of memorable vault releases.