The Tragically Hip’s Trouble At The Henhouse
More Beaver Hour Index
For every Justin Bieber and Alex Trebek who manages to gain acceptance in the larger apparatus of pop culture, there are plenty of Canadian bands, films, TV shows, and would-be celebrities who seem uniquely, even despairingly Canadian. The A.V. Club’s Beaver Hour Index looks back on these Canuck curios, from cultural crossovers to indigenous oddities.
This week: We take on the Kingston, Ontario rockers of The Tragically Hip and their five-time platinum, Juno Award-winning album Trouble At The Henhouse, which was released on MCA (then an American subsidiary of Universal) in 1996.
Part of our heritage because: The Hip is to Canadian alterna-rock what U2 is to Ireland and R.E.M. is to America. Gord Downie, with his bald head and prose poetry—did anyone else check out Coke Machine Glow from their high school library?—is our nation’s Michael Stipe, freed from pretension, psychosomatic weirdness, and ambition. Trouble At The Henhouse might not be the band’s best album (that’s usually awarded to the previous outing, Day For Night), but it is the band at its most iconic. If you never stood at a Future Shop listening booth, gently head-nodding to “Ahead By A Century” on headphones and thinking about the futility of beauty, only to be nagged by your mom to hurry up and pick your cassette already, then goddammit, we don’t want anything to do with you.
The Tragically Hip and its acoustic-poet ilk (we’re talking The Rheostatics, The Weakerthans, Joel Plaskett, and, to a lesser extent, 54-40 and Barenaked Ladies) make up a seminal genre called “Canadian cottage rock.” (For more information on this progression in Canadian music, please pick up the excellent guide to late-’80s/early-’90s Can-rock, Have Not Been The Same. It’s an oral history as told by Blue Rodeo and Daniel Lanois, you guys!) Everyone knows that one guy in high school who could play “Bobcaygeon” on acoustic guitar. Now imagine that guy (clad in a Roots toque and Tevas) sitting near a campfire somewhere near Barrie, rocking out after you’ve consumed five Molson Canadians at your friend from high school’s uncle’s cottage on Victoria Day weekend. Is there any way he’s not going to get to second base tonight?
Loving The Hip might be reserved for those who willingly wear “Canadian Girls Kick Ass” T-shirts or who can recite that Molson Canadian commercial verbatim a decade after the fact. But to dislike Trouble At The Henhouse is to deny a certain sort of patronage to the Gordon Lightfoots and Joni Mitchells that came before The Hip. The Can-rock tradition is all about storytelling, and Downie’s opaque lyricism neatly falls in line with songs like “Let’s Stay Engaged” and “700 Ft. Ceiling.” It rocks, in a subtle, blues-orientated, Cameron House sort of way—which is to say, minimally and politely. Even-tempered and self-reflexive, The Tragically Hip’s Trouble At The Henhouse is a simulacrum of our country.
“We live to survive our paradoxes,” sings Downie on “Springtime In Vienna.” The Tragically Hip is a classic “big in Canada” band whose popularity never threatened to escalate outside its native land, save for maybe a few spots at the jammier summer music fests dotting the Great Lakes perimeter. Unlike a lot of the stuff this feature covers, the Hip is a legitimate Beaver Hour titan, single-handedly responsible for FM stations across Muskoka (Moose FM, The Bear, The Wolf, etc.) meeting their CRTC requirements. If Gord Downie is as deviant as we allow our rock stars to be, we’ve got plenty of Q107 Victoria Day marathons to look forward to.
Most Canadian moment: Probably the low-key single “Butts Wigglin,” which appeared on the soundtrack of Kids In The Hall: Brain Candy. In this bluesy slump of a song, Downie sings of “the sweet sound of patent approval,” and seconds that “in my opinion, the drug is ready.” Here’s a song that even the wheelchair-bound Cancer Boy could dutifully sway to.
Legacy: A homegrown smash hit, Trouble At The Henhouse cemented the Kingston group as charting heavyweights. The album debuted as No. 1 on the Canadian albums chart and stayed there for an entire month. The following year, The Hip decimated the Junos, winning both Best Rock Album and Group Of The Year. Since then, the album has been certified platinum five times in our country, with five singles to its name (“Ahead By A Century,” “Gift Shop,” “Flamenco,” “700 Ft. Ceiling,” and “Springtime In Vienna”).
Why? It’s a complicated answer. Critics accused the band of “pedestrian bar-band boogie,” and for polishing—with the help of co-producer Mark Vreeken—any grit away from their previous works. But the group’s affecting acoustic anthems (like the overly metaphoric “Flamenco”) access a tender place in listeners’ hearts. Downie excels with the sensitive acoustic track that’s slightly damaged (“Maybe a prostitute could teach you how to take a compliment,” he sings at one point), with the closer, “Put It Off,” being the flipside to R.E.M.’s “(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville.” The band’s chops are sufficient, though they rarely flirt with any sounds outside the even-tempered guitar jam. (The quick buzz of distortion on opener “Gift Shop” is a rare showing of psychedelic strength.)
“Ahead By A Century” is a hushed, beautiful song about the growing pains of adolescence and a quiet remembrance of childhood. That beautiful, plaintive guitar line; clip-clop percussion; and to-and-fro harmonization on the chorus always make the song a revelation on FM radio for good reason. Incredibly sensory (“Rain falls in real time and the rain fell through the night / no dress rehearsal, this is our life”), Downie and The Hip wrote a song that crests and falls like waves slapping at the cottage dock, and it will always sound perfect.
Can-rock exists as a part of our heritage for a reason, and it cannot be ignored. The precursor to the digital revival of bands like Broken Social Scene and Arcade Fire, The Tragically Hip charted a legacy of emotionally affective guitar tracks notable for their simple sophistication. The band wasn’t cool like Sloan, or deviant like Eric’s Trip (a band The Hip both name-check on the album and one of whose former members Downie would later collaborate with), but the music is satisfying and nutritious, like the Red River Cereal we know and love. Unafraid to break your heart while you nod your head to the beat, The Tragically Hip accesses a cerebral plane that’s smart enough for dumb hosers. God bless and keep them.
Cultural cringe factor: 4 out of 10, for limpid Can-rock that always sounds like home.
