After the under-whelming
Music @ Work, the Tragically Hip get the retooling they need on
In Violet Light. The band's lean, powerful ninth studio album boasts a series of compact rockers and more languidly paced tracks that bear all the hallmarks of the Hip's style--the churning guitars, the penchant for wide-open soundscapes and, of course, the ever-cryptic utterances of singer Gord Downie. Yet the new songs also benefit from greater focus and a renewed sense of purpose. A change of scenery and personnel has helped considerably. To record
In Violet Light, the Hip decamped to Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas, an unusually exotic spot for guys who cut their teeth in the bars of Kingston (Ontario, not Jamaica). Moreover, long-time producer Steve Berlin was replaced by Hugh Padgham, a studio veteran who favours a careful, economical approach on discs like the Police's
Synchronicity, XTC's
English Settlement, and Phil Collins's
Face Value. Padgham's influence is discernible in the trio of punchy songs at the beginning of
In Violet Light, an opening salvo that suggests the band has recaptured some of the brio of
Fully Completely. The best of the three, "Use It Up," combines a raunchy, Stones-y riff with Downie's command to "use it up, use it all up, don't save a thing for later," playing off a beloved line by writer Raymond Carver. "Silver Jet" is equally tough, gradually building a sort of burly menace. Of the uptempo songs, only "All Tore Up" fails to impress, largely because Downie's wordplay chases so far ahead of the music that the song threatens to collapse. The mellower, more epic-minded Hip tracks are also well served by the effort to give the songs a better sense of structure and clarity. "Leave" and "A Beautiful Thing" open like creepy folk-rock numbers, but flourish into two of the disc's most jubilant songs, with the former's instruction to "change yourself into something you can love" functioning as a mission statement for the album as a whole. Dominated by references to beauty and perseverance, Downie's lyrics have rarely seemed so optimistic. Then again,
In Violet Light's closing songs are as bewildering as any long-time fan could hope for. Stormy "The Dire Wolf" contains a daunting barrage of images and references, including nods to Alfred Hitchcock's 1944 thriller
Lifeboat, an extinct species of wolf, and the Grateful Dead song of the same name. Besides having the most inevitable song title in the Hip's career, the two-part "The Dark Canuck" is also one of the most mesmerizing. With the band's sometimes off-putting idiosyncrasies still firmly in place,
In Violet Light might not restore the Hip to the commercial predominance they had in the '90s. But it's strong enough to prove that the group's unlikely marriage of arty eccentricity and arena-ready rock has still got some life.
-- Jason Anderson
~ Tragically Hip
~ Tragically Hip
~ Tragically Hip
~ Tragically Hip
~ Tragically Hip
