The Next 500 #11: Fully Completely

The Next 500 Greatest Albums of All Time

Over the course of reviewing albums on both “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time” and “The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far,” I have found that some albums aren’t receiving the recognition they deserve. I decided to showcase my personal picks for some of the greatest albums of all time in a series called The Next 500. Perhaps if Rolling Stone did a list of 1000 Greatest Albums of All Time, these would be on it; perhaps not, but these are some of my favourite albums of all time not represented otherwise.

The Tragically Hip, 1992

This one is going to be a challenge. It’s not just that I could have picked several Tragically Hip albums for this post, it’s that it will be nearly impossible to convey how great this band is, and how big this album was, and how devastating it was when Gord Downie passed (it still is).

The band hit at the right time. They brought classic rock and roll without the gloss and told intense stories with a million historical and geographical references, capturing fans from every part of the country. This wasn’t a regional band, it was a national band, and if you didn’t like them, you didn’t admit it; still, you knew the songs. They became an institution, a nationally televised band, synonymous with being Canadian. Gord’s death from brain cancer in 2017 only cemented their legacy, as their farewell tour and accompanying documentary is now stuff of legend, making Canadians weep at the drop of a feathered hat.

25 years earlier, however, they were building that legacy. Their previous three releases had already started the legend, an incredible live band mystifying audiences. If they had called it a day after Up To Here and Road Apples, we might still be talking about them, just not as a band intertwined with Canadian culture, but as a kickass touring band. The songs from those two albums are still played just as much as ones from Fully Completely: “Blow at High Dough,” “38 Years Old,” “Little Bones,” “Twist My Arm,” and, of course, “New Orleans is Sinking.”

The Tragically Hip’s “Up to Here” | A Quick Look at the 1989 Debut Album that Launched a National Obsession

In 1992 Fully Completely changed the course of their career, launching them into Canadian royalty. These 12 songs, a perfect 47 minutes, represent so much to so many people. Downie’s lyrics, while always clever, are now poetic; his melodies are risky, threatening to overturn at any moment, but the band always catches him. It’s this tension between the lyrics and music that seems to make the difference to my ears, somehow keeping them enigmatic yet accessible for thousands to sing along with, sometimes simultaneously. The rhythm section, Gord Sinclair on bass and Johnny Fay on drums, are fantastic throughout; rhythm guitarist Paul Langlois and lead guitar Rob Baker are similarly on point.

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“Courage (For Hugh MacLennan)”

The lead track from this album is also one of my all-time favourites: “Watch the band through a bunch of dancers / Quickly, follow the unknown with somethin’ more familiar.” These iconic opening lines are a call to follow along, but also to trust that even though you’re hearing something “unknown,” soon it will sound familiar. The band, and Downie, are leading you through something extraordinary. This is my experience whenever I listen to this album - the band has a remarkable sense of breaking the fourth wall, bringing attention to the fact that you are in fact watching or listening to a band that is now playing for you. This isn’t a unique thing for artists, but it is new for this band, and doesn’t usually happen in rock songs. With the Hip, because their songs are usually narrative, addressing the listener directly adds a level to the story. In “Courage,” Downie paraphrases lines from the novel The Watch That Ends the Night, by Canadian writer Hugh MacLennan, in the final verse, adding an additional layer of narrative to his own lyrics. The chorus is a curious mystery to unravel: “Courage, my word, it didn't come, it doesn't matter / Courage, it couldn't come at a worse time.” It’s inspiring, maybe, but also reluctant, as though the narrator is doing his duty that may have dire consequences that they will now have to live with. This song intrigues me every time, as I wonder about the subject of the song, and how “courage” does seem to come at the worst time at times; I also think of the Canadian-ness of this song, not just the “For Hugh MacLennan” part, but because of the courage part, the solemn duty Canadians take on at various times, doing the right thing even though it’s the hardest thing.

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“Looking For A Place to Happen”

The second song is another rock and roll banger, a bluesy, driving song with a sharp wit that is, again, inscrutable, but also rooted in Canadian myth. My favourite part of this song is Downie’s inclusion of Jacques Cartier, French explorer who was the first European to reach the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and led various expeditions up the river. He was also the first person to use the word “Canada” to describe this area. However, the presence of Cartier in a modern song is not celebratory. As much as Canada’s history and the history of New France is important to our country, it’s also a story of colonization and suppression of the Indigenous people living there; the modern understanding of this prevents any such congratulatory mentions of Cartier or the other Europeans coming to this continent. Downie’s verse about him is satirical:

Jacques Cartier, right this way,
I'll put your coat up on the bed
Hey man you've got the real bum's eye for clothes
And come on in, sit right down,
no you're not the first to show
We've all been here since, God, who knows?

Downie is taking the view point of the Indigenous population, welcoming this new guest, knowing but not knowing the tragic history that is to follow: “Looking for a place to happen / Making stops along the way.”

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“We’ll Go Too”

I really love this song. It’s got such a great guitar tone, a jangle unlike anywhere else, along with a bouncing bass line and just an uplifting song: “They’ve all gone, we’ll go too.” It’s got one of Rob Baker’s best guitar solos, and one of Gord’s best vocal performances.

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“Wheat Kings”

It’s “Wheat Kings” that all Canadians remember, and especially if you live in Saskatchewan: “Sundown in the Paris of the Prairies” it starts, along with a haunting loon call, and it’s a beautiful opening. But it’s a story about wrongfully convicted David Milgaard, who, at 17 was convicted of a crime he did not commit and served 23 years in prison. He was released in April 1992 and this song came out in October of that year, with the full story and miscarriage of justice brought to light: “No one’s interested in something you didn’t do.” It’s this story and the sad, sombre song that hits hard nearly every time, becoming one of their most well-known songs, and easily one of the best-loved songs.

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“What’s that smell? Smells like coffee”

I could spend hours writing about each of these songs. “Fifty-Mission Cap,” about a missing hockey player, who became a legend, but the song is also about the narrator, who wears a WWII bomber’s hat awarded for flying fifty missions; he must have gotten it from his grandfather, and then he “worked it in to look like that.” Or “Locked in the Trunk of a Car,” easily their strangest story song, or “The Wherewithal,” or “El Dorado,” with one of my favourite lines: “I’ve got no genius for evil that makes me common.” Or “Lionized,” “Pigeon Camera,” or the title track, another live favourite. But it’s “At the Hundredth Meridian” where the story of this album concludes, though it’s the third song on the album.

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“At The Hundredth Meridian”

The 100^th meridian, in Canada, passes through Nunavut into Manitoba, and then just west of Brandon, Manitoba, “where the Great Plains begin.” This is the first mention of a specific geographic location in a song on this album. The song evokes the vast plains of the Canadian west, with the narrator asking to be buried, “unceremoniously” “at the hundredth meridian.” This song was also an exceptional live performance, as the band would increase the tempo through the course of the song, having already increased the tempo from the studio version. Downie would also use the breakdown in the middle section of the song to bring in other songs, or improvise other poems. It was always a highlight during their live shows. For their final show, televised in August 2016 (the CBC cut into the live Olympic broadcast to air the concert), Gord doesn’t do the improv - he was having trouble remembering the lyrics, the lyrics he wrote, due to his illness, and so when he gets to “I remember I remember Buffalo,” instead of continuing with “I remember Hengelo” and then “It would seem to me I remember every / single fuckin' thing I know” - he stops, and the band continues, though with a slight look of concern on their faces. And the silence from Gord, usually at peak energy at this point in this performance, is significant, as he gathers his strength for the next break, the increased vocal tempo of the next part:

If I die of vanity, promise me, promise me,
they bury me someplace I don't want to be,
you'll dig me up and transport me, unceremoniously,
away from the swollen city-breeze, garbage-bag trees,
whispers of disease and the acts of enormity
and lower me slowly, sadly and properly
Get Ry Cooder to sing my eulogy

And perhaps it’s just me, watching it now, 9 years later, but maybe that line, “If I die,” has more weight for him, as he knows he’s going to die - he’s got inoperable brain cancer. He takes his pause, and knocks it out of the park, singing it like old times, when contemplating your own death was a philosophical or poetic exercise, far in the distance, not a practical part of the process, imminent. It’s heartbreaking.

The whole show is incredible, watching the band do their best for Gord, and Gord do his best for the band, but he’s clearly labouring, less whimsical and maniacal than you’re used to seeing him in concert. The spirit is there, it remembers. And so that's what this album does for me, brings me back to all of Gord Downie’s best moments, his best songs, his best concerts. And this album is the band’s best album, though I will listen to nearly all of them constantly over the following 30 years.

This album is such an intense experience, triggers such intense emotion and memories, growing up and growing old, seeing old friends in new places, meeting new friends in old places, listening to new Tragically Hip albums as they come out, adding the new classics to the old ones. This band and this album are all of my experiences wrapped into one. It was released in 1992 but for me it was released yesterday, and contains my memories from then, too, just as it contains my memories of 35 years ago, and every point in between. It’s timeless and full of time, full of my time, all of time.