Possibly Downie was simply drawing a parallel between the inexperienced Henry Hudson, who piloted the ill-fated flight that went down with Barilko, and the neophyte pilots of the Allied Air Forces. Nevertheless it’s tough to disregard the imperfections on this picture of elite navy pilots, these dashing and supposedly unquestionable heroes. A few of them have been simply youngsters. A few of them weren’t heroes in any respect—not less than not but. They have been working it in. And if that picture of Canadian historical past might be difficult so shortly, as a chaser to a narrative a couple of vanished hockey participant, all the pieces was questionable.
Elsewhere the lyrics have been extra straight adversarial. “Wheat Kings” was torn straight from the headlines, an acoustic observe about David Milgaard, a 17-year-old wrongly convicted of a brutal rape and homicide in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Milgaard served 23 years in jail earlier than being launched earlier that summer time of 1992, and finally totally exonerated. The track begins in a watercolor picture of rural Canada, Downie singing of “sunset within the Paris of the Prairies,” however the veil is shortly pulled again to disclose the nightmare in Milgaard’s thoughts, “the place the partitions are lined all yellow, gray and sinister/Hung with footage of our mother and father’ prime ministers.” 5 of them had served within the time it took Milgaard to be convicted, undergo behind bars, and discover freedom.
Most pressing of all was “Searching for a Place to Occur,” which informed the bloody and bitter story of European annexation of Place of birth from two views. First, Downie gave voice to French explorer Jacques Cartier, who callously wished “To discover a place, an historical race/The type you’d wish to gamble with,” earlier than shifting the main target to an indigenous particular person fleeing for his or her life: “I’ll paint a scene, from reminiscence/So I’d know who murdered me.” The Hip weren’t telling the story of a harmonious nation. In every single place on Absolutely Utterly, there appeared to be injustice and dying, a beautiful-seeming facade melting away to disclose one thing grotesque and disturbing.
Absolutely Utterly exploded upon launch in Canada, promoting 200,000 copies in its 5 weeks. Within the States, it carried out so poorly that MCA pulled their advertising price range for it only a fortnight after its launch. “Two weeks earlier than the document comes out, all of the document firm is saying is, ‘It’s gonna be massive boys, look out!’ Then the week after, nobody returns our calls,” Sinclair mentioned. “That’s the way in which it’s.”
By July 1993, the band’s personal optimism had curdled. In an interview with the Calgary Herald, drummer Gord Sinclair put it right down to an angle south of the border. “I feel People have this bizarre factor about Canada,” he mentioned. “They appear north and determine it’s simply the 52nd state. Being from Canada actually doesn’t have a lot of an affect for them. They simply form of assume that you simply’re a second-class American or American with a humorous accent or French.”
