Flower
retired
Gord Downie Official Websitehttp://gorddownie.com/http://gorddownie.com/
Gord Downie Albums:
2001 Coke Machine Glow
2003 Battle of the Nudes
2010 The Grand Bounce
Tragically Hip frontman has made a new album with his friends, the Country of Miracles
By Ben Rayner
Pop Music Critic ~ Toronto Star
It’s gone out of fashion to admit it, perhaps, but fashion be damned: Gord Downie is still one of the coolest customers in Canadian music, right up there with Leonard Cohen and Neil Young.
He’s a superb rock ’n’ roll frontman, as the singer and lyricist for The Tragically Hip, the public face of one of the biggest bands in this country’s history. His solo soul-searching, though, has been equally if not more compelling; resulting in the poetic obscurantism of 2001’s Coke Machine Glow and 2003’s endearingly rough-hewn Battle of the Nudes, an album recorded with a handful of underdog friends dubbed the Country of Miracles. Had it not been associated with the name Gord Downie, it could have easily passed for the work of one of the many younger acts contributing at the time to a post-millennial boom in homegrown indie-rock.
And while its commercial heyday is behind it and old-guard fans grumble — as they’ve grumbled since, oh, 1994’s Day for Night — that The Tragically Hip no longer sounds like The Tragically Hip, even that particular CanCon institution has been on a creative upswing of late. Indeed, its last record, 2009’s Bob Rock-produced We Are the Same, often sounded like the work of an entirely different band, no small achievement for an act in operation for more than 25 years.
Tuesday, Downie and the Country of Miracles officially unveil their newest offering, The Grand Bounce. Eclectic, upbeat and suffused with Downie’s literate pride of place in being a father and family man and a Canadian citizen, it sounds like the work of an artist still driven to advance his art. Moreover, it sounds like the work of an artist having fun.
“Bob Rock taught me a lot. His friendship has taught me a lot about what you should expect from a recording session and, more importantly, how you shouldn’t expect anything less than absolute joyousness,” says Downie, 46, sipping a coffee after a brisk morning bike ride to a Distillery District patio. “You should feel great. You should feel 14 to be doing it. It’s true and it’s rare . . .
“We’re not building a nuclear reactor here. We’re not drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean with no plan in case something goes wrong. This is making music, this is melodious air and people can hear what goes into it. When someone says ‘I feel good,’ you say: ‘I know, it shows.’ You want it to feel good so it’ll show.”
Downie already knew that making music with the Country of Miracles — an on-again, off-again ensemble that includes Julie Doiron, Skydiggers’ Josh Finlayson, and Dale Morningstar and Dave Clark of The Dinner is Ruined — gave him a good feeling.
Thus, when a meeting with Death Cab for Cutie guitarist and producer-at-large Chris Walla at the Pemberton Festival in 2008 left him with similarly positive vibes, he figured that it might be time to start thinking about making another solo record.
“He sought me out backstage. I guess as a kid growing up in Seattle, he and his buddies had listened to the Hip coming across the border,” Downie recalls. “We talked very amiably and easily for a couple of hours, and I just came away from it thinking: ‘I want to see that guy again. I want to talk to him some more. I want to hang out.’ And that got me thinking about how I would do that.
“It just got some hunches rolling, really. I thought he’d really get along with these guys in the Country of Miracles. And I thought initially his sonic sense, with less to go on, would really mesh well with their sense of spirit. And in the end he brought so much more than just a sonic sense; he brought a sense of spirit. They all got along famously, so it was a hunch that worked out.”
Walla visited Downie last summer. The two went through the songs Downie had in hand. He doesn’t distinguish between material for the Hip and the material he releases under his own name, Downie says (“I generally use it up, as Raymond Carver would say, and don’t save a thing for later.”)
Walla offered up suggestions on where to take the material. “East Wind,” he thought, should open with “a thousand acoustic guitars off the top,” for instance, while “Drowning Machine” should sonically reference P.J. Harvey.
Downie was happy to surrender to another’s instincts, as was the Country of Miracles, so the whole troupe convened at the Hip’s lakeside Bathhouse studio near Kingston and whacked the whole album out over two weeks last August.
The entire session was “driven by camaraderie and friendship and spirit,” says Downie, who actually emerged with a more Hip-like and listener-friendly album than his previous solo fare. Nevertheless, he’s philosophical about the fact that some longtime fans might not know what to make of The Grand Bounce.
“I guess I want people to see me and to try to explain myself, and you don’t always get the chance,” he says. “Sometimes you don’t get the chance and maybe no one ever gets the chance to really explain themselves, to have people see them. But I guess I’m doing that or I’m in the process of doing that. What you’re hearing now is a guy in the process of trying to explain himself.”
Gord Downie Albums:
2001 Coke Machine Glow
2003 Battle of the Nudes
2010 The Grand Bounce
Tragically Hip frontman has made a new album with his friends, the Country of Miracles
By Ben Rayner
Pop Music Critic ~ Toronto Star
It’s gone out of fashion to admit it, perhaps, but fashion be damned: Gord Downie is still one of the coolest customers in Canadian music, right up there with Leonard Cohen and Neil Young.
He’s a superb rock ’n’ roll frontman, as the singer and lyricist for The Tragically Hip, the public face of one of the biggest bands in this country’s history. His solo soul-searching, though, has been equally if not more compelling; resulting in the poetic obscurantism of 2001’s Coke Machine Glow and 2003’s endearingly rough-hewn Battle of the Nudes, an album recorded with a handful of underdog friends dubbed the Country of Miracles. Had it not been associated with the name Gord Downie, it could have easily passed for the work of one of the many younger acts contributing at the time to a post-millennial boom in homegrown indie-rock.
And while its commercial heyday is behind it and old-guard fans grumble — as they’ve grumbled since, oh, 1994’s Day for Night — that The Tragically Hip no longer sounds like The Tragically Hip, even that particular CanCon institution has been on a creative upswing of late. Indeed, its last record, 2009’s Bob Rock-produced We Are the Same, often sounded like the work of an entirely different band, no small achievement for an act in operation for more than 25 years.
Tuesday, Downie and the Country of Miracles officially unveil their newest offering, The Grand Bounce. Eclectic, upbeat and suffused with Downie’s literate pride of place in being a father and family man and a Canadian citizen, it sounds like the work of an artist still driven to advance his art. Moreover, it sounds like the work of an artist having fun.
“Bob Rock taught me a lot. His friendship has taught me a lot about what you should expect from a recording session and, more importantly, how you shouldn’t expect anything less than absolute joyousness,” says Downie, 46, sipping a coffee after a brisk morning bike ride to a Distillery District patio. “You should feel great. You should feel 14 to be doing it. It’s true and it’s rare . . .
“We’re not building a nuclear reactor here. We’re not drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean with no plan in case something goes wrong. This is making music, this is melodious air and people can hear what goes into it. When someone says ‘I feel good,’ you say: ‘I know, it shows.’ You want it to feel good so it’ll show.”
Downie already knew that making music with the Country of Miracles — an on-again, off-again ensemble that includes Julie Doiron, Skydiggers’ Josh Finlayson, and Dale Morningstar and Dave Clark of The Dinner is Ruined — gave him a good feeling.
Thus, when a meeting with Death Cab for Cutie guitarist and producer-at-large Chris Walla at the Pemberton Festival in 2008 left him with similarly positive vibes, he figured that it might be time to start thinking about making another solo record.
“He sought me out backstage. I guess as a kid growing up in Seattle, he and his buddies had listened to the Hip coming across the border,” Downie recalls. “We talked very amiably and easily for a couple of hours, and I just came away from it thinking: ‘I want to see that guy again. I want to talk to him some more. I want to hang out.’ And that got me thinking about how I would do that.
“It just got some hunches rolling, really. I thought he’d really get along with these guys in the Country of Miracles. And I thought initially his sonic sense, with less to go on, would really mesh well with their sense of spirit. And in the end he brought so much more than just a sonic sense; he brought a sense of spirit. They all got along famously, so it was a hunch that worked out.”
Walla visited Downie last summer. The two went through the songs Downie had in hand. He doesn’t distinguish between material for the Hip and the material he releases under his own name, Downie says (“I generally use it up, as Raymond Carver would say, and don’t save a thing for later.”)
Walla offered up suggestions on where to take the material. “East Wind,” he thought, should open with “a thousand acoustic guitars off the top,” for instance, while “Drowning Machine” should sonically reference P.J. Harvey.
Downie was happy to surrender to another’s instincts, as was the Country of Miracles, so the whole troupe convened at the Hip’s lakeside Bathhouse studio near Kingston and whacked the whole album out over two weeks last August.
The entire session was “driven by camaraderie and friendship and spirit,” says Downie, who actually emerged with a more Hip-like and listener-friendly album than his previous solo fare. Nevertheless, he’s philosophical about the fact that some longtime fans might not know what to make of The Grand Bounce.
“I guess I want people to see me and to try to explain myself, and you don’t always get the chance,” he says. “Sometimes you don’t get the chance and maybe no one ever gets the chance to really explain themselves, to have people see them. But I guess I’m doing that or I’m in the process of doing that. What you’re hearing now is a guy in the process of trying to explain himself.”
Last edited by a moderator:
