“There was an urgency that pushed us to create as much as we could.” “We were documenting how he was feeling, very quickly,” said Broken Social Scene’s Kevin Drew, who produced the album. The process was a minor miracle of last-ditch vigor: 23 songs in all, many laid down in one take.
The album was recorded over two wildly productive four-day sessions at Downie’s Bathouse studio in small-town Bath, Ontario, as Downie endured the often brutal effects of his illness and its treatment-memory loss, frailty. Like David Bowie’s Blackstar and Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker, Introduce Yerself is the kind of confrontation with mortality afforded uniquely to artists who know or sense they’re near the end: It’s a farewell, a testament. I mention this at length because it is essential to understanding and indeed appreciating Introduce Yerself, Downie’s final, posthumous solo album, released just 10 days after his death. Our identity and culture are richer because of his music, which was always raw and honest-like Gord himself.” “When he spoke,” Trudeau said, “he gave us goosebumps and made us proud to be Canadian. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, upon learning of Downie’s passing, was compelled to issue a statement of mourning to the nation. It is hard to convey to outsiders what Downie meant to his compatriots. So when Gord Downie-lead singer, lyricist, and charismatic frontman of the Hip, but also poet, activist, actor, accomplished solo singer-songwriter, and altogether one of the most illustrious men in Canadian pop-cultural history-died last month of glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive and virtually unbeatable form of brain cancer, Americans were understandably mystified by the extent and depth of their northern neighbors’ grief.
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