AUDIO: Greasy Jungle

Day for Night finds The Hip at their apex, capitalizing on the momentum of their three previous albums and occurring just before the long downward slide of the next three. Their penchant for marrying ass-shaking grooves to unsettling subject matter works criminally well here, adding lighthearted and human touches to tales of death, guilt, frustration and miscommunication. In addition, nearly every song opens with an irrepressible hook. I've had the four note intro to "Inevitability of Death" stuck in my head for six years now.

Lead singer Gordon Downie is an unreliable narrator of the highest order. He's a mad poet genius with a tendency toward the verbose, yet we never know if we can trust him. He sneers when he should be sincere, gets excited over small things and seems to be holding out on us at times; even when we become aware that there's a third side to a story, we know from Downie's tone that he still knows more than we do and he isn't about to share. This lyrical obstacle course combines with throbbing, droning and relentlessly understated guitar and rhythm sections to create thirteen songs of dread, denial, unease and catharsis -- sometimes all at once.

"Grace, Too," kicks off the album in style, working up from a casual opening to demand your full attention. Unusually short on lyrics, it cagily alludes to what may or may not be an attempt by a man to solicit a prostitute. Part of The Hip's allure is that none of their songs are obviously about any one thing. Fans argue vehemently about what each song means, as Downie's lyrics are such a tangled mess that one can never be sure. But the moods evoked by the words, hand-in-hand with the chiming, grinding guitars, the stalwart bass and the driving drumbeats, paint a clearer picture than a straightforward story ever could.

"Daredevil" examines the psyche, not merely of a man going over Niagara Falls in a barrel, but of the crowds watching. "And the real wonder of the world is that we don't jump, too". "Greasy Jungle" is a liberating song about resentment between a longtime couple. It's trademark Hip: people refusing to say what's on their minds, living lives of silent, begrudging obligation to one another. But inside, their minds are churning away.

After such a strong opening, later songs like "Yawning or Snarling", "An Inch an Hour" and "Emergency" seem hard-pressed to keep up, yet they hold their own on an album peppered with classics. In fact, Day for Night may be the sole Tragically Hip album without a bona-fide "throwaway" song. "Fire In the Hole", the token fast-paced rocker, seems to exist solely to prove that the band could still kick out the jams as they'd on earlier albums. "So Hard Done By" uses a congo drum, maraca and Gord Sinclair's insidious bass to couch Downie's confidential lyrics: "Interesting and sophisticated / Refusing to be celebrated / It's a monumental big screen kiss / It's so deep it's meaningless."

The three most impressive songs on the album are also perhaps the least radio-friendly, despite the fact that two of them were hits in Canada. "Scared" is customarily cryptic, centering on what appears to be two people's attempts to frighten each other with stories, yet the subjects discussed -- hiding artwork from the Nazis, bloodied predators washing up on sandy beaches "as kids wade through the blood out to it to play" -- are hardly the stuff of normal ghost stories. "Titanic Terrarium" looks at life in a not-too-distant future from the point of view of disgruntled biosphere inhabitants with "no respect for bad weather". Yet the mood is so eerie as Downie recounts stories of mankind's previous and present failures that the underwater guitar wails, meant to infer the sinking crypt of the Titanic, are enough to send chills up my back every time. Most beloved of all by many Hip fans is another maritime-themed tragedy, "Nautical Disaster", in which a man recounts to an ex-girlfriend what may be a nightmare about a ship that hits a rock, resulting in the drowning deaths of thousands of men. "I was in a lifeboat designed for ten -- ten only / Anything that systematic would get you hated... The selection was quick / The crew was picked in order / And those left in the water got kicked off our pantleg and we headed for home." A dream symbolic of having survived a breakup, or merely a coincidence? Even Downie himself can't say. "Our conversation is as faint as a sound in my memory, as those fingernails scratching on my hull."

Strippers with coughing fits, the reversibility of miracles, photographs of dubious intent... The Tragically Hip cover a lot of ground on Day for Night. Maybe it's their choice of subjects, or the way in which they express their opinions, forcing the listener to form his or her own conclusions, that barred them from success in the US. Maybe it's Downie's voice, ever tremulous and threatening to fall out of tune, yet able to imbue every syllable with seven layers of meaning. Then again, if Americans will embrace Geddy Lee, they'll embrace Gordon Downie. Whatever the reason for their near-unknown status, it certainly isn't a lack of polished, thought-provoking and irresistibly catchy songs with eminently quotable lyrics and hooks that embed themselves in your brain for life. As any Hip fan will tell you, it's everyone else's loss and our gain.

-- Justin Kownacki