Lay It Down

The band wanted to work away from Toronto's routines and found Rock Island on Lake Kashabog, a rock with one small house. They went there a week at a time to chop wood, cook, boat and hike, and to work on songs as laid back as the setting. Alan Anton recalled, "We found Rock Island, named not for music but for geology." For recording they looked for a studio with the same relaxed but focused mood and settled on a big-porched house in Athens, Georgia, where John Keane had built his studio. They moved in during June 1995.

Pared back to a foursome, with Michael doing all the guitar work, they added strings for the first time on four tracks, recorded live with the band. It was their first album of entirely original material, and the first that could be called straight-ahead rock. Come Calling appears in a male and a female version, representing two sides of an elderly couple dealing with Alzheimer's disease, drawn from a couple the band knew at the lake. A Common Disaster and Speaking Confidentially were hits on Canadian radio. It was the band's best-selling album since The Trinity Session.