It's probably not going too far to say that only a handful of bands have endured the peculiar mixture of heartening success and devastating setback that have been such a seemingly intrinsic part of the career of Canada's One Hundred Days. Band mainstays Andrew Horrocks and Ian Tanner met in high school in early 1985 with Tanner eventually joining Horrock's band, known then as The Awakening. By mid-1986 the group was touring extensively across their home province of Ontario. In the fall, the band recorded an independent tape which was picked up and released by Reunion Records in 1987. The critically lauded Sanctified generated the Top Five single "My Only Hope." While recording their second album in early 1988, the group's producer abandoned the project in midstream for an extended period to record a group in the States. The setback put the release severely behind schedule and Tanner and Horrocks, now under pressure from Reunion to deliver the follow-up, often spent 16 hour days finishing the second album. Although Into Thy Hands garnered the same critical praise that Sanctified had, it sold poorly and received little airplay. After a money-losing US tour during the winter of 1989, the band returned to Canada in July to find that they had been dropped from their contract with Reunion. After another independent release, several personnel changes and a second major label deal, the group, now christened One Hundred Days, released two well-received albums of uptempo power pop--1995's The Obvious and 1996's Feels Like Love. But, prior to the group's fall tour to support Feels Like Love, drummer Steve Marsh died of liver cancer. Further problems during 1997 with both their management firm and record company led to the band's once again becoming free agents. In 1998 the band recorded its third independent album, The Super Terrific Happy Hour, which was acquired by Audio X records and released in 2000.
Like previous efforts, The Super Terrific Happy Hour, covers both spiritual matters, including holiness ("Sandals") and God's sovereignty ("Always a Reason"), and interpersonal themes such as friendship ("Like No Other") and lost love ("So Much Depends"), in roughly equal portions. And Tanner and Horrocks' characteristic, slightly left of center, wittiness is still evident on songs like "Mr. Lovely," which deals with contestants on a television disco dance program, no less. But, while the band's impressive and unique lyrical prowess remains unchecked, songs like "Suspense," written about the band's frustration with the music business at large, and "Carpet Time," which pokes fun at the Pentecostal movement, exhibit a decidedly darker, often biting, sense of humor. Indeed, songs like these and even the album's more frivolous numbers, like "Purple Shades," a tongue-in-cheek ode to a pair of sunglasses, bear a sublime, almost embittered, disregard for commercial success. On the musical side of the coin, the band has added second guitarist Darryl McWaters. Whereas the group's previous efforts as a trio bore an intricate, almost delicate pop sensibility, McWaters' able fretwork bestows Happy Hour with a fuller, heavier texture. And the album's soaring vocals and near-frantic instrumental accompaniment on songs like "You" and "Contact" offer the ideal breeding ground for the band's newfound attention to a more groove-intensive attack for their compositions. Even though Happy Hour does contain its fair share of both musical and lyrical cliches, its better songs are easily on par with any in the band's now sizeable catalog. And, while the album is anything but uniform and is likely the group's least commercially accessible release to date, its meandering musical and lyrical approach are the very ingredients which instill the album with the buoyant, unrehearsed sound of a band that has finally thrown caution to the wind and made the album that it always wanted to. Though the circumstances leading up to Happy Hour have undoubtedly been unpleasant, the album itself is as engaging to listen to as it surely must have been healing to make, which makes it cause for celebration indeed.
3.5 tocks
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