WINNIPEG - The Tragically Hip were anything but lonely over at their end of the rink last night, where their show at MTS Centre drew close to 11,500 rabid fans.
And lucky for everyone who showed up, the much-revered Can-rock quintet was firing on all cylinders, proving that after more than two decades together, they're still one of this country's most reliable commodities.
Opening with the sweeping rocker Lonely End of the Rink, from their new album World Container, the Hip quickly gave notice they were here to entertain, drawing an extended guitar solo from the tune and giving frontman Gord Downie a chance to try out some Riverdance-worthy high steps.
By this stage in his career, Downie has the frenzied shaman schtick down to a science, so it was no surprise to see the 42-year-old burst into similarly inspired bouts of dancing during follow-up numbers New Orleans is Sinking and Fully Completely.
Projected video images of snow-covered pine trees proved a perfect match for the wistful ballad Bobcaygeon -- what with its wintry references to checkerboard floors and Aryan twangs -- and later morphed into even trippier shots of Canadian vistas for the sped-up anthem The Drop-Off and the countrified lament Ahead By A Century.
The cohesiveness of the other four Hip-sters (bassist Gord Sinclair, drummer Johnny Fay, and guitarists Bobby Baker and Paul Langlois) is by now a thing of legend, but the bandmates sounded especially tight on the vaguely epic In View and the bluesy Poets, which Downie closed with one of his trademark (albeit truncated) stream-of-consciousness rants.
The lighters came out for Fiddler's Green and World Container's title track, both of which got a boost from Downie's craggy-but-still-soaring vocals, but the band kicked things into high gear again with a raucous version of At the Hundredth Meridian.
It was at this point that Downie unloaded a longer version of the aforementioned stream-of-consciousness routine, spitting out syllables with all the fury of a man possessed. And while it was kind of hard to make out the words from our perch up in the press box, even from a distance, the effect was utterly, well, Hip-notic.
Toronto alt-country outfit The Sadies opened the show with 45 minutes of the rootsy, garage-rock rave-ups that have become their specialty over the last decade. Brothers Dallas and Travis Good proved especially adept at surf-inspired instrumentals, though they also found time to trade rumbling harmonies on a number of jangly, twangy country-punk tracks, plus a few that delved even deeper into straight-up psychedelic rock.
