I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: THE TRAGICALLY HIP-Road Apples (1991).

A cleverly designed cover signals an amazing album inside. After the vast improvements of Up to Here, Road Apples rocks and is the first of the Hip’s most great and cohesive records from this period.

The one-two punch of the opening rockers “Little Bones” and “Twist My Arm” is sublime.  And Downie has really found his voice at this point.  Those initial two songs show the kind of complexities the band will add on future discs.

The rest of the disc is really successful raw, bluesy rock.  The guitar solos are longer and more substantial (songs like “Bring It All Back” showcases Rob Baker soloing skills).  And the bulk of the rest are songs that could be staples of any classic rock station.

But they mix up the styles a bit as well.  “Cordelia” is a brooding, intense song, that builds from a quiet intro into a rocking chorus, the kind of song which later albums will showcase.  “Long Time Running” is a grooving ballad.   And “Fiddlers Green” is a pretty acoustic number.  The final track, “The Last of the Unplucked Gems” is another mellow acoustic track, but it foreshadows some of the great songs the band would write in the future.

Road Apples is a hugely successful disc, although for my tastes it’s on the next two albums that The Hip really hit their excellence.

[READ: January 26, 2011] “Not Enough Horses”

This second flash fiction of The Walrus’ 2004 Summer Reading Issue has a similar “problem” as the first one. It actually feels too long to be flash fiction.  True it is only one page and, since it is mostly conversation, it is very brief.  But the story is actually rather detailed, something which I feel doesn’t quite belong in flash fiction.

Indeed, it is a simple enough story:  a young man would like to marry a Native woman.  He goes to the woman’s father and begins offering him gifts for his blessing.  The father says that in the past the gift would have been horses, although the boy’s first gift is kittens.

Over the next few paragraphs, the gifts become more extravagant but when the father asks if the man has asked his daughter, he says he has, and she said no.  The father laughs.

The second half of the story shows the conclusion of the courtship and it is satisfying (and the end is actually quite funny).  But I can’t help but feel that there was a lot of build up for such a short ending.  It wasn’t bad by any means, it just felt slightly unbalanced, and I would have liked some more.