Today’s long weekend Monday finds our Humble Author confronted by a great many chores. Many a task lays before me, but none more important than to advance the CD Odyssey journey by one more record. Here it is.
Disc 1925 is…Phantom Power
Artist: The Tragically Hip
Year of Release: 1998
What’s up with the Cover? Some kind of industrial electrical panel. I’ve worked on lots of industrial sites where there are panels like this one and I can tell you one thing with certainty – I do not touch these buttons or dials. That’s for folks with proper training only.
Having said that, the one indicator light situated centre-right labelled “MALF” would sorely test my resistance. What does MALF do?
Then I realized that the entire row is dedicated to MALF. You can choose your synchro levels of MALF and pick a MALF between one and twenty (I would choose 11) and then flick that switch and then see what lights up out in the yard, baby!
And then be escorted out of the gate by the foreman, because there’s no room on a construction site for an untrained guy messing with the MALF settings.
How I Came To Know It: I know this album from when it was released, but I’ve only recently been filling out my Tragically Hip collection. I’ve been pretty cagey (you might even say…bobcaygey) about it, knowing there are more than a few copies of nineties Hip record floating around on CD.
Case in point: I bought “Phantom Power” at a thrift store for one lowly dollar. The CD looked a little bit scratched but I figured for a $1 it was worth the risk and sure enough, a quick clean and the whole thing played without a hitch.
How It Stacks Up: I now have eight Tragically Hip albums. When I wrote my first Hip review I only had four, so the rankings through time don’t make a lot of sense. All I can say is I recalibrate each time while honouring my original “what’s before what” determinations in earlier reviews.
“Phantom Power” is a good one, but the Hip have a lot of good ones. I put it #5 out of 8.
Ratings: 3 stars
Canada’s house band, the Tragically Hip, are a bit of a big deal up here in the true north, strong and free. The rest of the world may shrug, but when the Hip put out a record in Canada, the tundra quaked with excitement.
I like the Hip, but my journey to them was slower and more meandering, and so while I knew all the hits off of Phantom Power, it took a while for it to echo its way into my heart. Finding it for a $1 didn’t hurt either.
The Hip are a hard rock band and while “Phantom Power” has exceptional melodies and song concepts, they tend to be dressed up in the saturated arrangements and production of the mid-nineties treatment of that genre.
This should have immediately turned me off, but like so many Tragically Hip records, the complex layers of sound on each song are masterfully pulled together. It creates a three-dimensional soundscape where you can focus on a single instrument if you wish, but it is even better when you find that sweet spot in your focus where everything comes at you even in the mix.
Sitting at that nexus point, I dug down past Gord Downie’s high vibrato vocals (where I started) and found Rob Baker’s sublime guitar work, sometimes laying down a gentle bird song on the slow songs, and cranking out tsunami-sized riffs on the heavier tunes.
The record had a number of hits back in the day and won a bunch of awards (Canadians – I know you know this. That part was for the international audience). The best song is “Poets”. As a person who identifies as a writer all the time and a poet some of the time, “Poets” always gives me a good chuckle, with its narrator’s broad disparagement of the occupation. Best line:
“Don’t tell me that they’re antisocial
Somehow not antisocial enough.”
Yup – give that moody guy on the deck half an opening, and he’ll be reciting to you his latest effort in blank verse before you have a chance to say “sorry, my cab’s here”.
“Poets” has that early Hip sound, digging down in the grime of the blues and then blasting through it with rock and roll crunch. The Hip could stay in that space for a whole record and leave the audience satisfied, but instead they have a few songs that break can also break it down, and later on “Thompson Girl” Downie and the lads do just that.
“Thompson Girl” is a sweet tune, made sweeter by the addition of some timely mandolin, and Downie’s high head voice warbling. Downie approaches “Thom Yorke alien voice” in a couple of places here, showing his sneaky range that often goes unnoticed while the band is just rockin’ out.
In the end, there was nothing on “Phantom Power” that negatively pushed it down to fifth best in my Tragically Hip collection. Maybe just fewer “higher than high” points than some of the records in front of it.
This is a solid collection of songs, with an urgent lean in the delivery that is good for driving and some subtle fireworks of sound, arrangement and the evocative poetry of Downie that makes it just as fun on headphones.
But there I go again, telling you what the poets are doing. Go listen for yourself.
Best tracks: Poets, Something On, Bobcaygeon, Thompson Girl, Fireworks, Vapour Trails
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