Snow in June

Relatively regular readers of terra incognita may have noticed that this month's "CD of the Month" is The Northern Pikes' classic 1990 album, Snow in June. I actually picked up this CD last year for 2 bucks at a church yard sale in Columbus Ontario; and the minute I saw it sitting there, scratched jewel case stacked along side some old AC/DC discards, some tattered Tom Clancey novels and a box of random stereo parts labelled 25₵, it was like bumping into an old High School friend, 20 years later.

And popping it into the CD player on the drive home was like sitting down with said old friend over coffee for one long catch-up session. The edge of Shotgun Morning wasn't quite as cutting as I recalled, but Love these Hands and Am I in Your Way still perfectly evoked that happy ache for good things gone.

For reasons that go far beyond musical tastes, this album is one of the few that I'd rank as an "Album of My Life." Taken objectively, it's a bit of a diamond in the rough. The song-writing is solid, and the musical ideas original, but the production is a kind of spare and often the energy of the music gets lost in the mix, so depending on the given day and the particular track, sometimes you get more diamond, sometimes you get more rough.

But taken subjectively, this album has been with me through it all; and that's why I was so ready to shell out two bucks at the yard sale for a happy reunion. My friend Tom and I first heard "She Ain't Pretty" on the radio back in the summer 1990, and we belted out lines like "her ego wrote cheques incredibly fast, but her personality didn't have the cash" with gusto. I actually purchased my original (cassette) Snow in June on my first date with the girl who would later become my high school sweetheart and later still my wife. It was one of the few cassettes I packed with me when I went to live in Quebec as an exchange student in my grade eleven year, and whenever I missed home (which was often) and especially my afore-mentioned high-school sweetheart (which was always), it would pick me up, with lines like "Did you ever know a place where nothing ever changed, a place you've maybe called your home?" Years after that, when I'd started my career as a teacher and was commuting an hour each day to a job that was draining the soul out of me, it was the only cassette in the car for months; and on that long drive home each day, as I wrestled with the worst identity crisis of my life, it would challenge me with lines like, "Oh just wait until you're dead, we'll see just how big you were (you weren't no Columbus, Rembrandt or a Mozart)." And later still, when I'd finally put that identity crisis down for the three-count, and had become a new Dad, I'd often rock my newborn son to sleep singing the words of "Love These Hands" over him.

Listening to Snow in June that drive home from Columbus Ontario, all these memories, and many more, rushed home to me with the opening riff of "Dream Away", and lingered, bitter-sweet, right to the fading outro of "Snow in June." And they've left me wondering if the best albums aren't always these: the ones that have sealed our memories onto our hearts, by singing just the right song at just the right time, asking just the right question in a moment of crisis or offering just the right answer in a moment of peace, in a way that only music can.

I'll leave you with a few of my favorite lines from Snow in June, but along with them this question: if you had to choose an album that's "been with you through it all," which would it be?

"My perfect life may deceive me tonight
forgive me, I haven't been myself lately
I may survive if I don't jeopardize
what you mean to me"

"Sharp is the razor that cuts the vein that feeds the hand
It isn't my hand so why should I feel the pain?
You've gotta know where your razor is and what it does--
Isn't it lovely?
Isn't it beautiful?"

"I love these hands so soft and strong
I love these hands they can do no wrong
I love these hands, they belong to you
and I will love these hands my whole life through."