Fully & Completely: Redux

Episode 6 — Trouble at the Henhouse (1996)

In this episode of Fully & Completely: Redux, we land in 1996 and crack open Trouble at the Henhouse — one of the most misunderstood, emotionally loaded, and quietly radical albums in the catalogue of The Tragically Hip.

What should have been a victory-lap record turns into something stranger and braver: stripped-back, red-toned, reflective, and full of songs that don’t explain themselves — they linger. This is the sound of a band surviving the 90s, refusing to coast, and accidentally making one of the era’s most enduring records.

Hosts jD and Greg LeGros dig into the album track by track, placing it inside the cultural hangover of the mid-90s: the end of high school, the death of grunge’s innocence, shifting radio formats, CanCon realities, and the moment when everything felt like it was changing — whether you were ready or not.

What We Talk About

• Why Trouble at the Henhouse feels like the hangover to Day for Night
• The opening five-song run (Gift Shop → Flamenco) as one of the strongest stretches in the Hip’s career
• Robbie Baker’s guitar finally stepping out of the shadows
• The sequencing controversy (yes, we’re talking 700 Foot Ceiling and Butts Wiggling)
• “Ahead by a Century” as a once-in-a-generation song — and why it had to be the one
• Gord Downie’s writing shift: misdirection, restraint, and devastating clarity
• Don’t Wake Daddy as the emotional centre of the record (and the 90s)
• Sonic Youth, PJ Harvey, Eric’s Trip, and the ghosts living between the grooves
• Why this album was divisive then — and why it’s essential now

Standout Moments

• The bleed from Gift Shop into Springtime in Vienna as a mission statement
• The Kurt Cobain reference that somehow lands with grace
• Flamenco as both comfort and confrontation
• Sherpa as pure atmosphere — the quiet psychedelic cousin of Day for Night
• Put It Off as an ending that feels like everything slowly going dark

Why This Album Still Hits

Trouble at the Henhouse isn’t flashy. It doesn’t chase hits. It doesn’t hold your hand.

It sits with you.

This episode makes the case that the record’s power lies in its restraint, its refusal to repeat past triumphs, and its willingness to capture a moment when music — and life — felt heavier, stranger, and more complicated.

Red instead of blue.

Morning instead of night.

The hangover instead of the party.

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