While the occupation that Gord Downie lists on his passport is "musician", he could just as easily have cited "songwriter", "poet", "video director", or even, existentially speaking, "restless spirit". "I enjoy the process of writing to a fault," he admits. "I love doing the work. I love solving the puzzle."
When songwriting is in your blood, it's impossible to stop the flow. For Battle of the Nudes, his second solo album and the first on MapleMusic Recordings, Downie channels a waterfall of ideas into a 37-minute sonic cauldron that swirls with roughage and delicacy.

As Downie puts it on "Pillform #2", an indictment of how books may have lost their impact in the age of video-spoonfed information, "Bigger dream, bigger screens, bigger feelings are planned." In short, Battle of the Nudes is a revealing portrait of the artist @ work.

The album title's duplicitous nature fits in with The Tragically Hip frontman's multifaceted oeuvre. "I saw the title in a newspaper I was reading while on tour in Cleveland last year," he recounts. "I was looking at the gallery and museum section, and one of the upcoming exhibits was called 'Battle of the Nudes'. It didn't say much else, so I can only presume that it was an exploration of the nude in painting. The constant layers of the title stayed with me, and the idea of transparency, of fighting with no clothes on - literally, figuratively, and spiritually - very much held an appeal. So much about 'The Battle' is in perception."