Melville is the second album from Rheostatics and their first since reforming following a year's break-up. If we were picking the most Canadian album on this list, this would definitely be my first choice (actually, it was my first choice, whatever the criteria). Almost every song is clearly Canadian, without ever being hokey or trying to force the issue, and their cover of Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" is definitive.
"Record Body Count" was released as a single and reached hit status on alternative radio, while its promotional video received extensive play on MuchMusic. This (along with Black Cabbage's "Chester") always struck me as a sort of Canadian version of Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" – teen bullying and outsiderness without guns, but perhaps I can write about that, if either of those songs makes the list.
Melville didn't make the best seller charts, but it is one of the few albums to be selected in all three Chart Magazine lists of top Canadian albums, peaking at #5 in 2000, ranked 38th in Bob Mersereau's The Top 100 Canadian Albums book in 2007, and placed 15th in the 2011 Mar*Star poll. AllMusic gives it four stars (out of five), but seems to take issue with its Canadian content:
the album still drips with Canadiana, name-dropping three provinces, one city, and two famous Canadian bands, and features a cover of another Canadian legend. There's also a song in Canada's other official language.
I don't think I heard of Rheostatics until returning to Southern Ontario from Fort Frances in early 1992, but I quickly became a fan. While I missed seeing Rheostatics at their first out-of-town gig (in 1980, at Waterloo's Kent Hotel, opening for L'Etranger), I did see them at their (supposed) penultimate gig (in 2007, at Waterloo's Starlight Social Club) and then at their latest comeback gig (in 2016, at Massey Hall).
| Hometown: | Etobicoke |
| Label: | Green Sprouts Music Club |
| Release Date: | April 1991 |
| Producer: | Michael Phillip Wojewoda |
| Style: | alternative rock |
| Mar*Star 125: | did not rank |
| Mar*Star 150: | 56 |
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Track Listing
Personnel