When The Tragically Hip launched their third album, Absolutely Utterly, in October 1992, it offered over 200,000 copies inside 5 weeks and went on to promote greater than one million at a time when few acts in Canada had been promoting half these numbers.
May The Hip have foreseen that sort of success? It’s not possible to say. Absolutely Utterly was recorded at a time of confidence among the many 5 members – Gord Downie, Rob Baker, Paul Langlois, Gord Sinclair, and Johnny Fay — who had been using excessive following the success of their sophomore album Street Apples a yr prior.
There will need to have been some trepidation as properly since Bruce Dickinson (the vice-president at MCA who found The Hip) had prompt they work with an upcoming producer named Chris Tsangarides, who knew as little about them as they did about him.
Tsangarides had made his mark with arduous rock bands like Skinny Lizzy, Judas Priest, and Black Sabbath and represented a stark departure from The Hip’s earlier producer Don Smith, who helmed their first two albums. As a substitute of taking part in stay to file within the studio, Tsangarides needed to file the members individually and attempt to seize how they sounded stay.
He needed the rawness and authenticity of their performances, solely larger and extra polished, which appeared like a good suggestion even when it made for uninteresting moments within the studio. This was how most albums had been recorded because the late 70s, however The Hip was an exception. There will need to have been reservations, however they did what they had been requested and created a bit of labor that sounded higher on the radio than something that they had put out earlier than.
Radio may additionally be the important thing to understanding why Absolutely Utterly gained so many individuals over, and so shortly. The Hip had constructed a repute for being an astonishing stay band, however this was in all probability the primary time an viewers might pay equal consideration to what their songs had been about. Listeners had been abruptly uncovered to their nuances and the sort of lyricism that immediately set Downie aside from his contemporaries.
Set in opposition to among the stadium-filling albums of 1992 – Core by Stone Temple Pilots, the eponymous debut by Rage In opposition to The Machine, Worry of the Darkish by Iron Maiden, Adrenalize by Def Leppard, or Nirvana’s Incesticide – the tracks that kind Fully Utterly appear to own an nearly fragile high quality with their concentrate on hockey, geography, and sixteenth-century Conquistadors.
Whereas their 1987 debut supplied hints of a considerably skewed strategy to songwriting (“I’m a Werewolf, Baby”), and Street Apples noticed Downie embrace his idiosyncratic model with references to Jacques Cousteau and Shakespeare, it wasn’t till Absolutely Utterly that he allowed his interior poet to take the higher hand, wanting inward the place different bands aimed for worldlier themes of affection, and sexual conquest.
This was evidenced within the album opener “Courage (for Hugh MacLennan),” the place he paraphrases the Canadian writer within the bittersweet chorus, “There’s no simple explanation, for anything important any of us do/And yeah the human tragedy, consists in the necessity of living with the consequences.”
Like all Hip data, Absolutely Utterly sees Downie litter the album with Canadian references, relishing the specificity of his muse. He namechecks Jacques Cartier, the primary European to map the Saint Lawrence River in “Looking For A Place To Happen.” On “Fifty Mission Cap” – considered one of The Hip’s most enduring hits – he’s impressed by a hockey card that includes Toronto Maple Leafs’ participant William Barilko, who disappeared on a flight along with his dentist in 1951. The workforce didn’t win one other Stanley Cup till 1962 when his physique was discovered.
As for “Wheat Kings,” it’s arguably the one music in rock that opens with the sound of frequent loons, these North American aquatic birds that occupy satisfaction of place on gold-colored Canadian greenback cash. Set in rural Saskatchewan, it referenced a miscarriage of justice involving David Milgaard, who served 23 years in jail for a rape and homicide he didn’t commit. Milgaard was arrested in 1969 and launched in 1992; the yr “Wheat Kings” was born. Nothing concerning the music should have prompt longevity, but it surely thrived, showing 359 instances on stage and coated by 17 artists over the band’s lifetime.
Finally, it’s not possible to outline what precisely makes Absolutely Utterly an album price celebrating many years later. It has weathered modifications in tastes, moved from cassette gamers to streaming within the ether, and retained a sure efficiency that marks all nice albums with the stamp of one thing timeless.
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