TORONTO - Santa may have been tardy with his holiday delivery to 500 lucky fans of The Tragically Hip, but it's doubtful anyone is going to gripe.

Wednesday night a packed Horseshoe Tavern was treated not only to an intimate 20-song, nearly two-hour set by the Kingston rockers, but also a sneak preview of songs from the group's pending album (which currently is without a title or release date).

The show was hastily publicized via Toronto radio stations just before 6 p.m. and within minutes, a line was forming outside the Queen St. W. venue. The $20 admission was to benefit the Our Millennium campaign, a project initiated by the family of actor Dan Aykroyd -- a longtime pal of The Hip's.

To give an idea of what kind of night it was, one only needed to look at the number of cell phones being held aloft, as sweaty fans called friends to validate their presence at the hush-hush show, or flashed instamatic cameras -- not at the band, but back at themselves to provide photographic proof of their good fortune. You had to be there, and if you were lucky enough to get a foot in the Horseshoe door, apparently you wanted everyone to know about it.

The strongest of seven new tunes aired during the set was the night's kickoff number, a rollicking ditty apparently called "Music At Work," with lyrics that seemed to co-opt the slogan used by easy-listening radio stations. With its soaring chorus, it's as natural a single as the group has ever recorded.

The other new ones -- the winning "Puttin' Down" and "Stay," the trippy "I Saw You/Birdseye View," the ominous "Lake Fever" ("We can skip to the next fury ... you whispered hurry," go the lyrics) and "Overnight Train," (all titles unofficial and based on what could be grabbed from the lyrics) -- won't be considered a radical departure from the style of 1998's "Phantom Power," but neither will any of the new stuff trotted out this night concede any of the ground The Hip has staked out for itself. "People In The Water," with lyrics that appeared to innumerate the nationalities most likely to suffer shark attacks, may have upped singer Gord Downie's penchant for strange subject matter to new, previously unimagined heights.

The balance of the set provided many delights and few surprises (beyond Downie apparently forgetting the words to "Something On"), but yielded the rare pleasure of seeing the group in close quarters, obviously feeding on the audience's ardour. The crowd's vocal participation on "Poets" and "Springtime In Vienna" literally overwhelmed Downie's delivery, which only seemed to spur the singer on to greater improvisational heights.

"One hundred Super Bowls, and we're all playing. Do you feel the tension," he freestyled during "Ahead By A Century." "At The Hundredth Meridian" evolved from the familiar chugging rocker into a bizarre funk workout with added allusions to Y2K jitters: "How safe ARE our airports," Downie intoned rhetorically. Likewise, Downie dedicated "Grace, Too" to Canadian soldiers on standby during millennium celebrations, then peppered the lyrics with references to "rocking the bass" and "ruptured spleens."

The response to a set-closing run at "New Orleans Is Sinking" was so fervent, the Horseshoe's owners would have been forgiven for worrying whether the venue would make it to its 53rd birthday in the new year. Despite the best efforts of a keyed-up, sweaty mob of Hip fanatics, though, the club maintained structural integrity.

Any concern that the group needed to work out some musical kinks before their back-to-back millennium concerts at the Air Canada Centre on new year's eve and new year's day should be dismissed, too. The Tragically Hip is ready to rumble.

Set List The Set List (question marks denote new material, with presumed title)

1. Music At Work (?) 2. Poets 3. Gift Shop 4. Puttin' Down (?) 5. Springtime In Vienna 6. I Saw You/Birdseye View (?) 7. Something On 8. Ahead By A Century 9. Stay (?) 10. Fireworks 11. Lake Fever (?) 12. Vapour Trails 13. At The Hundredth Meridian 14. People In The Water (?) 15. New Orleans Is Sinking

(encore) 16. Grace, Too 17. Overnight Train (?) 18. Save The Planet

(second encore) 19. Bobcaygeon 20. Courage