Canada and I haven’t been on the best terms recently, but in spite of that, I still think it’s a great country. Clean, friendly, lots of health care, the Mounties are awesome, and they’ve been producing some great music recently. So, in honor of the Canadian victory over the US in the World Baseball Classic earlier tonight, I thought I’d post a couple of my favorite songs about Canada.
Ride Forever
This is a song from the TV show “Due South” which was on in the 90s, though I never knew about it at the time. A friend recently lent me the entire series on DVD and I was enthralled. Basic premise: a Mountie moves to Chicago (with his pet wolf) to investigate the mysterious death of his Mountie father. He is, of course, overwhelmingly polite, friendly, and helpful. He teams up with a streetwise American cop, who is none of those things. Hilarity ensues. Together, they fight crime. I strongly recommend it.
Anyways, on my favorite episode, they are riding on a train being filmed by a crew making a documentary about the Mounties. In an effort to lively up the impression of the Mounties, they break into song. Of course, as it turns out, the film crew are actually terrorists who pump some chemical into the air to put the Mounties to sleep mid-song (which enables a great scene later in the episode when they all wake up simultaneously and immediately resume boisterously singing the chorus).
The song was actually written and performed by the star of the show (Paul Gross), which I think is pretty neat. It has the feel of an old Canadian cowboy song, and the chorus is a whole lot of fun.
Anchorless
One of my favorite Canadian bands is Propagandhi. They make some of the very best political music there is. This song, however, is a little different. It’s a lot quieter than most of their other songs and not overtly political or angry. This is mostly because it is one of the few Propagandhi songs by John Samson (who left the band in the late 90s to form the Weakerthans, who make a lot of songs along the lines of this one). It’s a song about living in a small town in Manitoba, never going anywhere or doing much of anything. Also, he talks about P.G. Wodehouse novels, which is fun.
Lakes of Canada
I think the word “ethereal” exists just so it can be used to describe this song. I don’t know a whole lot about this band, but the one thing I know for sure is that she has one of the most amazing voices ever. Set over a light, slightly waltzy, set of acoustic guitars, her voices surrounds, almost envelops you. It sounds like a wave of mist that settles over you as you sit out on a boat in the middle of some Canadian lake. The air is cold but still, and all is ghostly, silent. You keep thinking that they’ve added instruments as the song grows on you, but it’s still the same couple guitars and her voice. But, in one sense, her voice is so amazing because it can convey all of that while still sounding fragile. In the same way, you keep thinking that this song is about life, the universe, and everything, but eventually realize it’s only about the smallest of moments. Except, “life, the universe, and everything” is really nothing than a series of moments. So because the song is able to universalize the little moments of beauty we all find in our lives, maybe it is about all of that. Anyways, it’s a great, haunting song.