This one was hard to decide, hard enough I listen to only Tragically Hip albums for 2 weeks. The Tragically Hip seem like some Canadian institution. I remember when Gord Downie died a few years ago I was disappointed that I had never got to see them in concert.

After all that time I’m no longer disappointed that I never saw them in concert. In fact the worst albums were the live ones and they didn’t even make it into the rotation in the second week of listening. The albums that did have some live tracks on them had those tracks skipped in the second week because the live performances weren’t great.

The worst part of the live music though was Downie himself. His banter with the crowd went on forever and was terrible.

Then we get to the music, which I enjoyed but at no point did I find myself stopping work to enjoy a song like I did with Civil War by Guns N’ Roses. This took so long because no single album stood out to me as being excellent. They’re all good and I would find my head bopping along with the song while I sang par of them but nothing stood out.

As I thought about the music on my dog walk this morning I can only describe it as vanilla. Yes it’s good, but it’s not that exciting and if something else comes along with more substance you’d choose that instead. Sometimes you’ll choose vanilla because you miss it’s simple flavour, but it’s not your go to choice. That’s how I feel about The Tragically Hip. It’s good, but nothing stands out. I’ll choose other artists but every once in a while I’ll go back and enjoy the simple music from this iconic Canadian band.

You can find all the bands I’ve looked at under the discography tag. Next up is Brad Sucks.