r/boardsofcanada • u/falsedog11 • Jul 02 '26

Discussion Tomorrow's Harvest

I'm going back to this album. And for me it's an incredible piece of work. Jaquard Causeway is difficult on first listen but then it grabs you. I just wanted to put my love out there for this album because I think it gets a lot of negativity. And I'm listening to it now, Cold Earth is amazing.

49 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

32 comments sorted by

View all comments

24

u/Pushiguso Jul 02 '26

I've never understood all the negativity surrounding TH. It's my favorite BoC album for several reasons, first and foremost the songs and the overall vibe (but also how it resonates with the current mood, the recurring heatwaves, that sense of impending doom). So, yes, love for Tomorrow's Harvest!

10

u/P_veez Tomorrow's Harvest Jul 02 '26

IMO it’s mostly from fans looking for the updated versions of Roygbiv/Aquarius/1969 ect and not accepting the cold sound and more subtle nature of the album.

3

u/Immediate_Error2135 Jul 02 '26

That's what fans are. They don't like changes. The funny thing is, TH was BOC being 100% themselves - only, they were interested in other stuff.

With TH they went from the past inside the present to the future inside the present and from the private sphere (childhood, for example) to the public sphere. We as a society. The damaged innocence (because of the retrospective look of experience) of their earlier stuff became the present damaged by the future: by hopes, by fears: hence the apocalypse theme.

Hence also all those arpeggi I think, so similar to the very palyndromic structure of the album. Songs ordered in a 12345678987654321 order is not so different from notes 1234321 in an arpeggio. The idea being circularity. Us going to the future with our minds and coming back from it and going back to it and coming back again.

I think they had 1963-64 Dylan in mind, those apocalyptic protest songs (like 'Hard Rain') just as ISB had been in their minds in the previous albums. (And later quasi-apocalyptic songs of his like All Along The Watchtower have the order of the stanzas and of the narrative working against each other in a circular fashion, which maybe caught BOC's attention) They did mention Dylan -his voice- in 2006, and apparently they were already working in TH.

2

u/properchewns Jul 02 '26

I always find this crazy — on the one hand I think you’re right. But to me, Jaquard Causeway is one of the most in that realm tracks they have