The Tragically Hip: "Morning Moon"

I literally begged this band after World Container (2006) bludgeoned us with Bob Rock’s notorious lack of subtlety: please, a better muse. His return on the Hip’s newest record is disappointing but not that much of a surprise; historically they’ve stuck by some awfully mediocre Big Record producers, steadily churning out good-to-great albums despite them all. Even when writing their oddest material—on records like Day For Night (1994), Trouble at the Henhouse (1996), and Music at Work (2000)—they either didn’t look for or couldn’t find a producer who truly fit, someone who could build on and add to their songs instead of working hard against them by treating the group like some populist bar-band.

Like Mark Vreeken and Hugh “worked extensively with Phil Collins, Police, Split Enz and Sting” Padgham before him, Rock is never going to be that person—so it follows that “Morning Moon” isn’t that song and We Are The Same won’t be that record. Still, short of the band finally stumbling on the right producer and making a truly adventurous album—and I don’t even necessarily mean experimental, which going by World Container apparently means “sound more like David Byrne”—this is as good a single as a Hip fan could hope for these days. There’s an unfortunate Rock-led tendency to overdo things as the song develops, but “Morning Moon” is leagues above their last record’s attempts at overblown balladry, instead far more akin to the beautiful country-rockisms of “Bobcaygeon.” The Neil Young influence is palpable, from the Buffalo Springfield-era lead guitar to the underlying Comes A Time (1978) vibe, with Gord Sinclair and Paul Langois’ nasal sighs playing the part of Nicolette Larson.

Gord Downie, meanwhile, sets the song up with their studio’s view of the Nine Mile Point nuclear facility on the shores of Lake Ontario: “The reactor’s down, I guess for Labour Day / Today is the first day I ain’t seen a great plume of steam from across the lake.” He plays on this sense of exception throughout the song, from “the bulb (sun) and the mirror (moon)” hanging in the sky together (“that’s a morning moon, yeah!”) to “those little things that don’t make anyone feel better,” his voice relaxed and accepting, celebrating its own rarity: making something Bob Rock produced sound warm. I don’t know, maybe they’re slowly starting to break this guy down, making him see the error of his Diamond Dave/St. Anger (2003) ways—and good on them for making the best of another unfortunate pairing—but the negative impact of his utilitarian approach, and the frustration of hearing this band’s potential struggle to escape it, lingers.