The pride of Kingston, Ontario have announced they will release their 14th studio album Man Machine Poem on June 17th.
This band is a contradiction on many fronts. Legends in Canada, barely known outside their home and native land. Meat and potatoes rock and roll line up fronted by an odd dancing poet of sorts. The fact that they’ve been together for 32 years, and have the exact same line up intact is in itself an anomaly in Rock n Roll.
Like so many bands with that kind of longevity, only their truly hardcore fans are clamoring for the new material at their gigs, but at their stage in the game, a band is writing and recording material, because, well…that’s what they do. And they’ve still got some game. They’ve released the first single for the new album “In A World Possessed By The Human Mind”, and fans of the band will get what they’re looking for. Singer Gord Downie has a hard-to-pin-down melody, Rob Baker is never really soloing, never really playing rhythm on guitar, and drummer Johnny Fay drives the bus like some kind of Canadian Charlie Watts – never flashy, always solid.
The Hip have had to carry the mantle of quintessentially Canadian for decades (there are two guys in the band named Gord – come ON!), and they don’t seem to be putting it down any time soon. Check out the newest track below:
