The Tragically Hip "Road Apples" (1991) review

(The third in my series of Tragically Hip album overviews, in which I investigate the discography of this criminally undervalued Canadian band).

I'm beginning this overview of the Tragically Hip's Road Apples with a warning that this ended up being a much deeper dive than even I anticipated, but the Hip deserve the full attention of my (dubious) analysis. So don't say I didn't warn you.

For the follow-up to their debut LP Up to Here, the Tragically Hip headed down south to record in New Orleans. Don Smith was once again behind the desk as producer. The resulting album, Road Apples, refines the barroom and heartland rock of the first album. But while the Hip perfect the sound that they'd developed on their first two records, they also close the chapter on this phase of their career. The Hip would change course on their next album, Fully Completely.

But back to Road Apples. In 1990, the band convened at Daniel Lanois' Kingsway Studio with the fore mentioned Don Smith. There is no doubt that the Crescent City influenced the raw and bluesy feel of the music, yet the lyrics are the most "Canadian" that Gord Downie had penned to that point. The album was such a reflection of the Hip's life on the road in Canada that the original title was Saskadelphia. MCA balked at the title, so in a fit of cheeky humor the band opted for Road Apples, slang for horse shit. One could view this as either classic Canadian modesty for the Hip pulling the wool over the record execs' eyes. Maybe it's a little bit of both.

On the opening track, "Little Bones," the Hip start off where they left off on Up to Here. It's a full-on rocker with lyrics inspired at least in part by the band's stay in New Orleans. ("It gets so sticky down here..."). An insistent guitar riff introduces the song, with Johnny Fay soon joining in on drums. Initially--for the first 32 seconds, in fact--the guitar and drums are both in slightly different tempos. When they finally lock in, it's like a jockey and racehorse trying to get in rhythm after the starting gates open. The Paul Langlois/Gord Sinclair/Johnny Fay rhythm section is one of the band's major strengths, and once they lock in, "Little Bones" is one of the most propulsive tunes in the Hip canon.

I read somewhere, can't remember where, that the Hip considered the album's second song, "Twist My Arm," to be their "Red Hot Chili Peppers song." Considering that around the time the Hip were recording Road Apples, the Chili Peppers were riding high on their Mother's Milk album, it's conceivable that was where the inspiration came from. "Twist My Arm" is the Hip's stab at funk. It is not one of my favorite songs by the band, as it goes on a bit too long and funk workouts aren't the Hip's forte. This is a song that is actually much more effective in a live setting.

"Cordelia" is named after a character in Shakespeare's King Lear, and this is the first indication that Gord Downie's songwriting had taken on weightier and more literary concerns. Cordelia is King Lear's third and youngest daughter. She refuses to profess her love for her father, in return for one-third of his land, and is thus banished. One analyzes Gord Downie's lyrics at one's own peril, and I won't pretend to know how Cordelia fits into the song, other than the protagonist comparing his own plight to that of Cordelia's ("I'm not Cordelia/I will not be there"). Whatever the lyrics mean--if they have any linear meaning whatsoever--the shifts from intense to subdued and back to intense are clear markers of the band's growth as songwriters and performers.

Gord Sinclair's bass leads the way on "The Luxury," a song with a jazzy feel and a story of sordid desperation--a former prisoner living in a seedy motel with a (presumed) prostitute--that would not be at all out of place on The Doors' L.A. Woman.

Canadian cultural history is revisited in "Born in the Water," which explores a Sault Ste. Marie city council declaration that attempted to make the city "English language only." The declaration was struck down in 1994. (For more information about the origins of this song and many others, I urge the reader to investigate the outstanding HipMuseum.com web site, which has incredible detail about the many geographical, historical, cultural, and literary references in The Tragically Hip's music).

"Long Time Running" is the Hip channeling Stax/Volt soul via Kingston, Ontario, and then with a Kingsway Studios/New Orleans additive. Rob Baker's arpeggios owe a lot to Steve Cropper, and Gord Downie does his best Otis Redding.

After the Stonesy "Bring It All Home," which sounds like a holdover from Up To Here, the Hip unleash the furious and stomping "Three Pistols." It's more Canadiana from Gord Downie's pen. Early 20th century Canadian artist Tom Thomson, who died of mysterious circumstances in Ontario's Algonquin Park, is seen "paddling past/I'm pretty sure it was him." Thomson is also described as "shaking all night long/but my hands are steady," perhaps alluding to Thomson's ability with a paint brush in the shivering cold of Algonquin Park, or his ability to use a gun (a pistol?) under duress. It might also refer to a theory that Thomson was murdered and did not drown, as is conventional thought. Thomson's "little, lonely love" Winnifred Trainor--the real-life paramour of Thomson--shows up in the song and, in a bit of impressionistic flight of fancy, takes the singer to an opera house (nearby Gravenhurst Opera House?). She is later described as sweeping trinkets off Thomson's grave on Remembrance Day.

So what is "Three Pistols" about? Like most Gord Downie songs, the lyrics are loaded with evocative imagery but without anything remotely resembling an easy interpretation. Having said that, here's a stab in the dark. Tom Thomson was a reclusive, revolutionary artist who died under a shroud of mystery, a subject that would have obvious appeal to a young, idiosyncratic artist like Gord Downie. Downie identifies with Tom Thomson and his quest for artistic purity. And with that, I could be completely wrong. In any case, when you get right down to it, when a song blows the roof off with the power of "Three Pistols," it almost doesn't matter what Downie is singing about. The fact that the lyrics are as fascinating and evocative as they are is just an added bonus.

After the fiery rock of "Three Pistols," the Hip slow down the tempo on the bluesy "Fight," which seems to be about a couple at their wits end with each other ("Do you think I bow out 'cause I think you're right/Or 'cause I don't want to fight?"). "Fight" has a solid groove, but is one of the weaker songs on the album. This is not to say it's a bad song, just that on an LP with so many outstanding tunes, "Fight" is near the bottom.

I remember seeing the Hip for the first time, at the State Theater in Detroit. In their encore, they played a tune that brought the house down. At the time, I still wasn't completely familiar with the band's discography, so I couldn't quite place the song that the crowd was going nuts for. I later discovered it was "On the Verge," a shit-kicking rocker that might get a little lost among better-known ravers like "Little Bones" and "Three Pistols." "On the Verge" seems to be about someone who finds himself--or herself--in a strange community of hucksters, con artists, and charlatans but begins to find the place exciting and is "on the verge" of fitting right in. ("We got horse-throated hucksters whispered gimmicks/Rubbernecking all the curious cynics...well, I don't know what came over me/I'm too dumb for words/Well, I didn't think I'd like it here at all/But I swear I'm on the verge"). It's yet another lyric in which Gord Downie sympathetically explores the underbelly of society with its oddballs and outcasts.

"Fiddler's Green" might be the Hip's most revered song. It's a country-folk meditation on the death of Gord's young nephew. The name "Fiddler's Green" has a dual meaning. It's both a road in Ancaster, Ontario and, in mythology, an afterlife where there is eternal happiness, a fiddler who never stops playing, and dancers who never tire. A wonderfully idyllic place for a child who has left this earth too  early. The song was so emotional for Downie that the band did not play it live until 2006.

A view into the band's future arrives with Road Apples' final track, "The Last of the Unplucked Gems." It is a brief bit of folk-rock impressionism, similar to Fables of the Reconstruction-era R.E.M. Gord's inscrutable lyrics are a harbinger of the next few Hip albums, Fully Completely and especially Day For Night.

Many of the elements that made Up to Here such an energized and promising debut are also on display with Road Apples, but the songwriting is better and the music has added depth. At the same time, this is still fundamentally a bar band/roots rock album, and the band's musical influences remain obvious. The band had yet to fully develop its own signature sound.

In retrospect, it's clear that the Hip must have concluded they'd taken the road as far as it could go, and it was time for a new direction on Fully Completely, the album that would prove to be their artistic and commercial breakthrough.