Sound Salvation Army

We’re dipping into the archives today for a look at one of the finest Canadian albums released in the last 20 years: 1991’s Shakespeare, My Butt by the Lowest of the Low.

This album was released when my understanding and appreciation of music was just developing so I haven’t got much of a sense of the history of it. Wikipedia and such tells me that it was for a time the best-selling independent release in our country’s history, supplanted shortly after it was put out by the Barenaked Ladies’ Yellow Tape. But I’ve never seen a copy of that tape, so I don’t know what kind of gauge that is.

I learned about the band in 2000 while working at a Little Caesar’s pizza joint. I heard a commercial on the local rock radio station one afternoon about a reunion for Canada’s most legendary “bar band” coming into town (the supreme irony being that I’ve never heard a Lowest of the Low song on radio in Regina in my entire goddamned life). The only reason I cared was because the Weakerthans were opening and I had a serious boner for the Weakerthans after Left and Leaving came out. Their singer/songwriter John K. Samson cites the Low as a huge influence and frankly that’s enough to get me to check a band out. A lengthy, fawning fanboy interview with Samson later and I somehow worked my way on to the guest-list for the Regina date, despite the fact that it was sold out and I was not yet of legal drinking age. Sadly, I would know only heartbreak the evening of the show, as the venue insisted they were at capacity and couldn’t let anyone else in, regardless of whether or not they were on the guest list.

I may have missed one of the Low’s final, legendarily-intense live sets but after stumbling upon a copy of Shakespeare and I was sold immediately. Structurally, the “bar band” nomenclature probably pertains more to their follow-up Hallucagenia; this record has more of a folk-punk undercurrent, reminiscent in a lot of ways to the Pogues. The songs are based almost exclusively around acoustic and electric guitars primarily playing mid-tempo open-chord arrangements. There are guitar solos, shouts of exhilaration heading into bridges, occasional bursts of punkish energy, and plenty of harmonies. The songs frequently follow a traditional verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/chorus structure, but they’re peppered with effortless hooks that speak to an innate ability and understanding of the craft.

What sets them apart lies more in their lyrical palate that draws from history and world events set against the backdrop of Ron Hawkins’ native Toronto (he penned all but one track here). The songs reference Henry Miller, Dostoevsky, numerous Spanish landmarks and that country’s Civil War, Marxism, Dialectics, detailed descriptions of his favourite Toronto watering hole, Catholic iconography, an French massacre in the 1800’s, Klaus Barbie, a french basilica, the 1987 world market crash, class warfare, and much more. And that’s just one album! I’m sure depending on your view this might seem like a heavy-handed attempt to seem a little more high-falutin’ or intellectual, but its a very organic thing. It just is Hawkins’ writing style; he’s a guy who clearly romanticizes and adores France and Spain and likes good literature. You can definitely see how the Low laid out the template for Samson, a guy who writes songs about Michel Foucalt and John Hopper.

But much like his protege in the Weakerthans, its the human element of Hawkins’ songs that really holds your attention. A lot of bands write about the minutiae of love, life, and living but it takes an original voice to make you stand up and pay attention. Whether Hawkins is writing about his creepy neighbour getting arrested for murder or gossipy church-goers or the intangible, subversive elements of love he speaks not only with the voice of experience but also with a sense of humour mixed with a diametric dash of cynicism and hope. He lingers on the subtlest joys and pains of life, like enjoying unemployment because it gives you plenty of time to drink stout and read classical Russian novels. Like being inspired by exotic surroundings to love someone passionately. Like giving a friend who is a perennial loser one last chance to get it right. Like realizing you’re above the petty jealousies of average people. Like being utterly destroyed by a lost love, but still finding the smallest pleasure in the subtle memories that remain lodged in your skull. Like the pain that hesitation brings.

In the end the band was never able to overcome the inner turmoil that seems to have marked their entire lifespan, eventually resulting in a long-standing split after their second album was released. While they were able to overcome that to some extent and stick it out for the above-mentioned reunion tour (and the recording of a third album, Sordid Fiction, which never really struck a chord with me for some strange reason). The tension and energy that marked their albums is present on the live album that chronicles that tour, the marvelous Nothing Short Of A Bullet, most evident when Hawkins — in the middle of a song, no less — shouts, “Steve, whatever!” at axeman and sometimes-songwriter Stephen Stanley. But maybe tension and a certain level of unhappiness in the process or personnel is what makes some good bands great and some great bands legendary.

If you can find a copy of the album anywhere at any time, its definitely worth your money to pick it up, regardless of price. I consider this to be the seminal independent Canadian musical recording from a band that, in a perfect world, would’ve become the institution that the Tragically Hip has somehow stumbled into being. But I think the realist in me can see quite clearly these aren’t songs that are born from a perfect world, no matter how much better they make it.

 

 the Lowest of the Low - So Long, Bernie [3:55m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 the Lowest of the Low - Rosy and Grey [5:04m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 the Lowest of the Low - Gossip Talkin' Blues [3:25m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Low, Hawkins, and Stanley stuff is available through MapleMusic, Victimless Capitalism, and sadly their stuff seems to have disappeared from iTunes. For shame.

Pat entries bar rock, Canadian content, Lowest of the Low, rock