THE ICONIC DUO SHARES EPIC BALLAD “THE NORTH SHORE”
WATCH / SHARE “THE NORTH SHORE” LYRIC VIDEO HERE
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Built from hours of material created between 2009 and 2017, the Tragically Hip leader's collaboration with uber-producer Bob Rock bursts with vitality, buoyancy and bliss. It's not a sombre entrée — it's a lustre parfait. - Exclaim!
A stunning thrill ride that features Downie at his rocking, passionate best and Rock sculpting the perfect musical foundations around his lyrically cryptic musings.” - Toronto Star
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"The North Shore" marks tomorrow’s arrival of Lustre Parfait, the long mythologized album by The Tragically Hip's legendary late frontman Gord Downie and iconic multi-platinum Grammy Award and Hall of Fame producer Bob Rock (Metallica, Mötley Crüe, Michael Bublé). A soaring, august ballad to rival Downie's greatest epics – The Hip's timeless "Bobcaygeon" flashes to mind – "The North Shore" is replete with Gord's picture-perfect to-the-letter lyrics, personifying the dramatic haze of late summer ("Summer lowers its flag now / Gently brushes the floor") with Rock's starry cathedral of piano, and electric & pedal steel guitars. Told from the perspective of young lovers, "teen angels" on some nearby north shore – be it Kingston, where Gord grew up on Lake Ontario, Bob's homeplace of Vancouver, or Maui, where the duo recorded a swath of their 14-song collaboration – "The North Shore" sails the winds of inspiration that carry Lustre Parfait into innumerable magical corners, each brilliantly flecked the harmony of their poetry and power. "That's the beauty of the whole record," says Rock, "and ‘The North Shore’ is one of my favourite songs on it. When it's based on inspiration, there is no plan and you don't know where it's going, and that was really exciting."
"I had the music to 'The North Shore' around for a very long time,” he continues. “I think when Gord came to Maui when we did The Tragically Hip records, he stayed on the north shore of Maui, so we were joking that there was a north shore of Vancouver, it seemed there was a north shore of every culture and every country. But in the end what Gord wrote, it's not about any north shore at all, but just this beautiful story of a couple with his incredible imagery as the backdrop."
WATCH / SHARE “THE NORTH SHORE” LYRIC VIDEO HERE
Downie and Rock’s relationship began when they worked together on The Tragically Hip's World Container (2006) and We Are The Same (2009). Inspired by their union under the spell of rock n’ roll, it was after the second outing that Downie asked if Rock had music he could write lyrics for. The sonic spaces that Rock would provide led Downie into the depths of his notebooks, armed with the musical clues to find the brilliance mapped therein. Recording sessions between 2009 and 2016 in Maui, Vancouver, Toronto, and Los Angeles, featuring a multitude of seasoned Rock collaborators, led to Lustre Parfait – the ninth album to bear Downie's name outside the Hip, and the first album to bear Rock’s beyond the role of producer and engineer.
Songs like the title track “Lustre Parfait” and “The Raven And The Red-Tailed Hawk” showcase the boundless energy and heedless pace found within, both rave-up radio rockers that brim with glinting guitars, galloping drums, and combustive choruses. Steeped in their shared affinity for rock classics and pop punk abandon, instances of which have been heard before in The Tragically Hip’s “Fireworks” or Rock’s work with The Cult and The Payolas, Lustre Parfait is a striking contrast to the raw intimacy of Downie's posthumous solo releases – 2017's letter-to-loved-ones Introduce Yerself, and 2020's ghostly goodbye Away Is Mine – and the natural grain of his earlier solo albums like Coke Machine Glow and The Grand Bounce.
“First and foremost Gord was my friend, and having the opportunity to work with him on these songs was one of the biggest highlights of my professional life,” Rock says. “I am grateful that I got to witness his genius in such close proximity.”
“The North Shore” amply captures the essence of Lustre Parfait, an expansive collection that is dense with ideas flourishing from both sides, Bob’s instrumentals providing the framework for Gord’s lyrics, and his vivid imagery feeding the musical palette in turn. Rock calls “The North Shore” a “collage of their favourite influences” all balled up into an emotional, vicarious feeling of being there on a bygone summer night when “we held hands between our bikes.” From the raucous opening bars of “Greyboy Says” through to the exhale of the closing track “There Goes The Sun,” Lustre Parfait is a gift and invitation to eternally “gather in the dark.” As Bob Rock tells it: “Lustre Parfait is a reminder that even through the darkness, there is the joy of making music.”
PREVIEW SIX SONGS FROM THE ALBUM NOW
PREORDER 2LP & CD NOW
Lustre Parfait will be released tomorrow May 5, 2023 via Arts & Crafts. 2LP, CD, and digital formats are available to order now.
Photo Credit: Gordon Hawkins / Austin Nelson // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
LUSTRE PARFAIT ALBUM TRACKLIST
1. Greyboy Says
2. The Raven And The Red-Tailed Hawk
3. Lustre Parfait
4. The Moment Is A Wild Place
5. Something More
6. Camaro
7. The North Shore
8. Is There Nowhere
9. To Catch The Truth
10. Let Me Howl
11. HellBreaksLoose
12. The Safest Day Of The Year
13. In The Field
14. There Goes The Sun
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