SOUNDTRACK: THE TRAGICALLY HIP-Live at Austin City Limits Music Festival 2006 (2006).
I hadn’t heard of this album until I stumbled across it on the Yahoo! music page. As far as I can tell it hasn’t been released on CD. Or if it was, it’s no longer in print. But you can download all of these songs from your online retailer.
Austin City Limits has brought out some great performances, but if the cover photo is to be believed, this is the outdoor music festival and not the usual intimate setting that you see on TV.
This is a seven song EP. I’m not sure if it covers their whole set or not. But it does touch on many of their high points. “Courage,” easily one of their best songs, sounds a bit strained here. Downie’s voice sounds like he can’t hear the rest of the band (although I suspect he was just being intense). “The Lonely End of the Rink” sounds great, though. A really solid performance. “Gus,” one of my personal favorites, also sounds fantastic. These big anthemic songs work very well in this large setting.
They quiet things down a bit with “Bobcaygeon.” I’ve always felt that this song really shines live, an it certainly does here. But there’s little downtime when they rock out with the great “Poets.” “At the Hundredth Meridian” also rocks really hard, but as with “Courage,” Downie seems less than excited to be singing it. It just doesn’t have the attention to detail that he brings to the other songs.
The set ends with “Blow at High Dough” and unlike the other older songs, Downie seems to be having a lot of fun with this one. He plays fast and loose with some lyrics, but the stuff he adds is his usual bizarre stuff. It was a treat to find this recording, even if it isn’t their best live showing.
[READ: March 9, 2011] “Jackie”
As soon as the story opens, you know it’s going to be unusual: “I made a girlfriend a while ago. String, wax, some chemicals.” And, indeed, the narrator has made a woman, not an inert sculpture, but a full-fledged woman, who eats and speaks and of course has sex. He names her Jackie.
After her introduction, we learn about him. He is an engineer and a pro soccer referee. She enjoys going to the games. But aside from the amazing sex (he built her well), she seems mostly disinterested in him. He senses this but, since he made her, he assumes the best (although he does wish she’d get a job as it’s expensive doing all the fun things she wants to do.
So she gets a job at Imovax, and she is very secretive about her work. He tries to find out even what the company does but she more or less just blows him off. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 