Hear Two Songs From Late Tragically Hip Frontman Gord Downie’s First Posthumous LP

Late Tragically Hip frontman Gord Downie’s first posthumous album, Away Is Mine, will be released October 16th via Arts & Crafts. The label has shared two songs from the LP, “Hotel Worth” and “Useless Nights.”

“Hotel Worth” swings between the serene and the unsettling, with acoustic guitar and lonesome slide licks reverberating over atmospheric percussion. Downie’s voice too is often washed in effects as he sings, “I just live and do/Congratulations to me or to you/I’m a man/re-receive achieve then lose/A hotel worth of meaning/I just don’t understand.”

“Useless Nights” captures a somewhat similar vibe, although its slightly more streamlined toward an epic alt-rock apex where Downie belts, “Everybody needs it/Needs to be understood/Whether we’re jumping shadows/between the secret moon it’s trying/and it’s really, really, really, really good/Ah please be good to me/Yeah please save me from the useless nights.”

Downie recorded Away Is Mine in July 2017, just months before his death following a battle with brain cancer in October of that year. The album will be released as a double album, with electric and acoustic versions of the LP’s 10 songs.

“This won’t be his last release, but these are the final 10 songs Gord sang before he passed away,” Downie’s brother, Patrick, said in a statement. “The last time he ever sang into a mic. That’s pretty special to us.”

Downie made Away Is Mine at the Tragically Hip’s studio in Bath, Ontario, with guitarist, co-writer and long-time friend Josh Finlayson. Other collaborators included Travis Good of the Sadies, Dave “Billy Ray” Koster and Downie’s son, Lou, while Nyles Spencer produced and mixed the album.

“There really wasn’t a plan to make a record,” Finlayson said in a statement. “The whole thing was that I knew this was a great way to spend time with Gord, listening to music, talking about music, talking about things that we’d always talked about. And this just evolved pretty organically.”

Away Is Mine Tracklist

1. “Hotel Worth”
2. “Useless Nights”
3. “I Am Lost”
4. “About Blank”
5. “River Don’t Care”
6. “The Least Impossible”
7. “Traffic Is Magic”
8. “Away Is Mine”
9. “No Solace”
10. “Untitled”