The 8th solo album from this mellow mainstream Canadian singer songwriter is all about healing old wounds.
The record, his first in seven years, finds the member of roots rock trio Blackie & the Rodeo Kings in a reflective frame of mind. This is not so surprising when you learn that it follows on from the break up of a 14 year marriage and a parting of the ways with his long standing manager and an unforeseen change of record label.
As The Crow Flies sets the philosophical tone by focusing on moving on and looking ahead rather than reflecting on the past. The fact that Fearing has since remarried and become a father illustrates that he followed this advice closely.
He comes up with some good one liners, "barstools can make lovers out of strangers" (Just In Time To Say Goodbye) is one I particularly like, but these stand alongside tired clichés like "don't worry baby, here comes another day" (Wheels Of Love).
The title of Don't You Wish Your Bread Was Dough is something his mother used to say. He remembers this after being involved in a car accident together with other homely wisdom like "the measure of a man is not his wealth"
Cold Dawn takes a temporary detour from personal hardships to relate a first person narrative from the point of view of the sole survivor of a helicopter crash in Newfoundland which claimed the lives of 17 people.
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Back to his own tribulations, These Golden Days is a kind of lightweight version of Dylan's Tangled Up In Blue while the memories recounted in The Half-Life Of Childhood are painfully slow even by the side of other downbeat songs.
The exception to such soporific tunes is Keep Your Mouth Shut, a wake up call accurately described as Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover meets Johnny B Goode. It is lively and tongue-in-cheek but really belongs to another album as it sticks out like a sore thumb here.
He winds things up with a return to heartache on Early Morning Rain, a cover of a Gordon Lightfoot song.
Fearing's seductively mellifluous voice is not best suited to pathos so even in desolate story songs like these he sounds one step removed from the pain.
As a result, the hurt of his country folk blues is more John Denver than Johnny Cash and time spent between hurricanes is more likely to lull listeners to sleep than make them fearful of stormy weather.
Stephen Fearing's website
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