ABOUT THE ARTIST

Surviving life’s dizzying highs and crushing lows is a cakewalk compared to writing about them. But if you can do it, the results are very often liberating, cathartic, and a gateway to electrifying music. Witness Gord Sinclair’s Taxi Dancers.

The solo debut from the musician best known as bassist and songwriter with Canadian rock legends The Tragically Hip brings several firsts. Chiefly, it’s the first release from a member of the band since the passing of frontman Gord Downie in 2017, an event that united the nation.

Taxi Dancers is a farewell of sorts, fearlessly exploring Sinclair’s despair about losing a lifelong friend and bandmate. But it is also a clear-eyed survey of what’s good in the world, and a profound statement about why sorrow must be viewed in tandem with joy. Both are elemental aspects of living, and music — especially rock music, with its boundless capacity for nuance, shading, and sheer emotional heft — is perhaps life’s purest mirror.