The Tragically Hip at sold-out TLA

First things first: In Canada, from which they hail, and across Europe, where they're adored, the Tragically Hip are a stadium-filling band whose intensity precedes them.

Ask any "Hip" fan, and you'll hear that word: intense. That is, after those same fans remind you that the "Hip" sell out stadiums around the world. Maple Leaf hockey-jersey-wearing dudes and the women who love them, they all say it: intense, then stadiums.

This writer has another word: unsubtle. It's a compliment of sorts. But give me a minute.

At the Tragically Hip's sold-out, nearly three-hour TLA show Thursday called "An Evening With" - a title usually reserved for the likes of Liza Minnelli or Elaine Stritch - the 26-year-old band ran through its smart-rock catalog, old and new. With passionate potency, the six-piece band gave weighty treatment to songs from 1989's "New Orleans Is Sinking" to this year's "Coffee Girl," off the new album We Are the Same.

In a singing voice that seemed equal parts Michael Stipe (at his clearest) and Ethel Merman, tall bald vocalist and guitarist Gordon Downie pronounced each word sharply, as if teaching a foreign-language class. He seemed to want everyone to know exactly what he was thinking as he was thinking it - before, after, and during songs - as he strayed from lyrics to embrace the audience with rapid-fire monologues.

"This show starts with a conversation and ends with one too," Downie said, as the Hip kicked into the epic, chiming "The Last Recluse," with its "ay-oh" and "oh-oh" choruses evoking the chants of Vikings while sailing at sea. The band grabbed hold, one after the other, of songs with giant melodies, anthemic choruses, and overly talky lyrics - the throb-rocking "Yer Not the Ocean," the piano-rollicking "Honey, Please," the power-popping "Love Is a First."

"After a glimpse over the top / the rest of the world becomes a gift shop," Downie sang, during the overblown drone of "Gift Shop." That song's mix of grandeur and oddball observation is what marks the Tragically Hip, and makes them bold.

The Hip find simple subjects such as standing at the Grand Canyon's lip and glancing downward, and create rich, weird, detailed narratives and loud music about the experience. And that isn't so tragic after all.