BY ANTHONY D'AMATO

            There are two ways to see The Tragically Hip: in Canada, or anywhere else. Seeing The Hip in Canada is something akin to seeing Springsteen in New Jersey. The show happens in an arena, grown men revert to a teenage state of glee and excitement, and everyone there feels a sense of propriety over the band. Seeing The Hip anywhere else means just about the same thing, it turns out, only it all happens in a much smaller venue.

The Canadian stalwarts returned to New York City on Friday night in support of their latest album, We Are the Same, descending upon the Nokia Theater in Times Square with enough energy to fill up nearby Madison Square Garden. Any fears that the band's stadium rock wouldn't translate to a smaller theater were assuaged the moment they hit the stage. See, The Hip aren't stadium rock in the traditional sense of grandiose songs and soaring arrangements a la U2. They're a tremendously personal band, fueled primarily on the fire of frontman Gordon Downie, who seems utterly possessed by the spirit of rock and roll. He's too strange to call charismatic, but too riveting to look away from, even for a moment. He and the band explode onstage with the same intensity every night, regardless of the venue, and trying to contain that stadium-sized explosion in a smaller space just makes it feel all the more powerful.

"We're going to take you on a bit of a trip tonight," Downie announced at the outset, opening the show with something like a three-song travelogue. "The Depression Suite," an outstanding track from the new album, led things off with the story of a panic attack in a Chicago hotel room. They moved quickly into "New Orleans Is Sinking," an eerily prescient song from their 1989 debut Up To Here, and followed it with "Escape Is At Hand for the Traveling Man," a tribute to late musician Jim Ellison, who they met backstage at CBGB's in New York years earlier.

The show was split into two sets, and the first half was undoubtedly the more exciting of the two. It had just the right amount of drama ("Now the Struggle Has a Name"), pop ("In View"), and sentimentality (the beautiful "Ahead by a Century"). The first set was heavy on the new material, too, prominently featuring "Morning Moon," We Are the Same's country-tinged opener, and closing out with "Love Is a First," a hard-rocker with a frantic spoken word passage that's up there with the best of The Hip's writing.

Speaking of frantic, now is as good a time as any to discuss Gordon Downie. He's unlike any other frontman I've ever seen, and I mean that in the strangest sense possible. He danced around the stage like a marionette, seemingly without control of any of his limbs. He pretended to run up the monitors, whipped loops into his microphone cable, and spanked himself with the mic stand by stomping on the base. At one point he bounded around the stage like a chimp and then leaned out into the audience to mime like he was picking and eating bugs out of the hair of fans in the front row. When he got to the line "Bring on the requisite strangeness" during "The Depression Suite," it sounded more like his personal mantra than a request. Yet somehow it was all utterly charming. Perhaps it was because the antics never interfered with the music. Downie would shriek and shout and wail, but when he stopped singing, it was as if the music possessed him and took control of his body. Sure, the chimp thing was a little weird, but it never for a minute got boring.

Following a brief intermission, the second half started out with a mini acoustic set. Seated on stools, the band was no less dynamic, and "Bobcaygeon" got the whole crowd singing along as loud as any of the rockers. After a handful of mellow tunes, they plugged back in for fan favorite "Fully Completely" and proceeded to finish out the set with more hard-hitting electric material. Though most of the second set was drawn from older records, the haunting "The Last Recluse" and melancholy "Coffee Girl" from the new album both made appearances and were very well received by an adoring crowd.

[Photo Credit: Anthony D'Amato]