People who liked it liked it a lot. And most of those people were Canadians, it seemed. The Tragically Hip became immensely popular at home rather quickly while remaining close to anonymous elsewhere. They hoped to put that to an end with the release of their fifth full album, Trouble at the Henhouse on this day in 1996.
This was the first one that got released outside of Canada simultaneously with domestically; MCA clearly felt the time was right for some of their homegrown success to spread beyond Canada’s borders. Much like their previous album, Day for Night, they recorded a chunk of the album in New Orleans (the rest back home in Kingston, Ontario) and utilized Mark Vreeken to co-produce with them. Vreeken had begun as a roadie for them but his skills grew and soon he was a record producer; later a sound engineer for TV shows including Conan O’Brien. Perhaps not insignificantly, the dozen songs relied a little less on subjects like early 20th Century landscape painters, obscure drowned hockey players and hockey in general for that matter, and a bit more on universal themes. The song “Gift Shop” was said to be inspired by a trip to the Grand Canyon and they filmed a video for it partly in Arizona and New York City. And they put out a mixture of rockers like “Coconut Cream” and more mellow smoothies like the biggie off it, “Ahead by a Century”.
Reviews were, and still are, fairly mixed for it. Most Canadian sources loved it and the Orlando Sentinel marveled at how singer/lyricist Gord Downie “found beauty in the tiny wonders of life.” The Washington Post paid attention to and noted a “surprisingly large number of these songs are more atmospheric than aggressive”, indicating they’d heard the band’s early output of bluesy rockers like “New Orleans is Sinking.” The Trouser Press looked at it too but found it “meandering psychedelia” with too many slow songs that sounded alike. Retroactively, allmusic gave it a low 2-stars, worst of any of their full studio albums. They felt it too lacking in edge, “professional but rarely exciting.”
Canadian listeners disagreed. It produced four big radio hits – “Flamenco” (#12 in Canada), “Springtime in Vienna” (#11), “Gift Shop” (#4) and the aforementioned “Ahead by a Century”, their one and only #1 song in their homeland. In addition “700 Foot Ceiling” and “Coconut Cream” were well-played on radio and “Butts Wigglin’” got used in a movie… not surprisingly, a Canadian one, Kids in the Hall Brain Candy. The day after Downie’s untimely death in 2017, “Ahead by a Century” was the most-played song on radio in the land. Curiously, Downie himself picked “Springtime in Vienna” as his favorite song among their entire catalog.
The album did what Hip albums did back then – became an overnight smash at home and was ignored elsewhere. It debuted at #1 in Canada – their fourth straight chart-topper – and spent four weeks on top. It quickly was certified 5X platinum, less than the previous four but more than any future new album of theirs. It’s actually worth noting that MCA are a bit tardy… the album has sold over 650 000 in the land, enough for 6X platinum. It took home the Juno Award for Album of the Year too.
Elsewhere though it was met with yawns of disinterest. It hit #134 in the U.S. and none of the singles made it onto Billboard‘s various charts. Seemingly, the Netherlands were the only other place it made any impression at all, reaching #80 there. “Tragically”, to their fans, their fate never got any better in the U.S., nor UK or anywhere else. But on a happier note, they remained established as probably the most popular band in the land upto their very final concert, which the Prime Minister himself attended.