Possibly Downie was simply drawing a parallel between the inexperienced Henry Hudson, who piloted the ill-fated flight that went down with Barilko, and the neophyte pilots of the Allied Air Forces. But it surely’s tough to disregard the imperfections on this picture of elite navy pilots, these dashing and supposedly unquestionable heroes. A few of them have been simply children. A few of them weren’t heroes in any respect—at the very least not but. They have been working it in. And if that picture of Canadian historical past may very well be difficult so shortly, as a chaser to a narrative a few vanished hockey participant, the whole lot was questionable.
Elsewhere the lyrics have been extra straight adversarial. “Wheat Kings” was torn straight from the headlines, an acoustic monitor about David Milgaard, a 17-year-old wrongly convicted of a brutal rape and homicide in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Milgaard served 23 years in jail earlier than being launched earlier that summer season of 1992, and ultimately absolutely exonerated. The music begins in a watercolor picture of rural Canada, Downie singing of “sunset within the Paris of the Prairies,” however the veil is shortly pulled again to disclose the nightmare in Milgaard’s thoughts, “the place the partitions are lined all yellow, gray and sinister/Hung with photos of our dad and mom’ prime ministers.” 5 of them had served within the time it took Milgaard to be convicted, undergo behind bars, and discover freedom.
Most pressing of all was “Searching for a Place to Occur,” which advised the bloody and bitter story of European annexation of Fatherland from two views. First, Downie gave voice to French explorer Jacques Cartier, who callously needed “To discover a place, an historical race/The type you’d prefer to gamble with,” earlier than shifting the main target to an indigenous particular person fleeing for his or her life: “I’ll paint a scene, from reminiscence/So I’d know who murdered me.” The Hip weren’t telling the story of a harmonious nation. In every single place on Totally Utterly, there gave the impression to be injustice and demise, a beautiful-seeming facade melting away to disclose one thing grotesque and disturbing.
Totally Utterly exploded upon launch in Canada, promoting 200,000 copies in its 5 weeks. Within the States, it carried out so poorly that MCA pulled their advertising price range for it only a fortnight after its launch. “Two weeks earlier than the document comes out, all of the document firm is saying is, ‘It’s gonna be massive boys, look out!’ Then the week after, nobody returns our calls,” Sinclair mentioned. “That’s the best way it’s.”
By July 1993, the band’s personal optimism had curdled. In an interview with the Calgary Herald, bassist Gord Sinclair put it all the way down to an perspective south of the border. “I believe Individuals have this bizarre factor about Canada,” he mentioned. “They give the impression of being north and determine it’s simply the 52nd state. Being from Canada actually doesn’t have a lot of an affect for them. They only kind of assume that you just’re a second-class American or American with a humorous accent or French.”
