Four decades of music and thirty-one albums and not a single review on Whisperin' and Hollerin' -until now.
Somehow this is par for the course for an artist who has never come up with a song or album to make him well known outside a small circle of friends and a loyal group of fans.
Nevertheless, through a combination of consistency and sheer perseverance, Bruce Cockburn has gained the respect of his peers, has been inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and has even had a stamp produced in his honour as part of the Canadian Artists series.
He's an artist who wears his social conscience on his sleeve but, while political messages are strongly embedded in his music, it would glib to label him as just another protest singer. His songs speak more of a striving for a moral compass and a spiritual centre.
As a man with humanitarian concerns, he travels widely to see the trouble spots of the world first hand. Two songs on this album have origins in short visit he made to Canadian troops in Afghanistan.
The first is a surprisingly upbeat instrumental whose title - Comets Of Kandahar - refers to the name given to jet planes taking off at night. The second is a poignant song called Each One Lost which is a reflection on mortality after witnessing a ceremony in honour of two Canadian Forces members killed in action :"You can die on your sofa safe inside your home / or die in a mess of flame and shrapnel" .
There are four other instrumentals on the album: Bohemian Three-Step comes from an abandoned movie project; Lois On The Autobahn, dedicated to the afterlife, is named after his late mother; Parnassus is inspired by San Franciscan magic and mystery and, best of all, comes the meditative Ancestors played on acoustic guitar, chimes and singing bowl
Many of the other songs stem from thoughts and associations gathered while travelling. The opening track The Iris of the World contains thoughts drawn from a regular commute with his girlfriend between Kingston, Ontario and New York.
The song Five Fifty-One which refers to the stress from the traffic suggests this trip and the Brooklyn destination is less than relaxing and a tale of being raided by the NYPD in the middle of the night hardly lighten the spirits. The album's title comes from this song to add a philosophical note, with the line "small source of comfort, dawn was breaking in the air".
The life in motion theme also pervades two tracks - Driving Away and Boundless - co-written with Montreal singer-songwriter Annabelle Chvostek, formerly of The Wailin' Jennys.
The first evokes a gentle, reflective mood with highly literate lines like "The dichotomy of being a sentient being" while the second has a more frenetic, restless feel of looking for, but not finding a sense of stillness.
|
Another key collaboration on this album is with Brooklyn-based violinist Jenny Scheinma who has worked with Bill Frisell and Norah Jones. Her bluesy playing gives an elegant grace to many tracks.
She he can be heard to good effect alongside Tim Lauer on accordion for the track Radiance. This sets a beautifully languid mood to a song about divine femininity which Cockburn wrote after reading an interview with a Jungian psychologist.
Lyrically, the most striking track is Call Me Rose which is structured around a bizarre fantasy of Richard Nixon being reborn as a single mother on a housing project and learning what it means to be poor.
Called Me Back, about a friend who fails to return a phone call, strikes a similarly light hearted note, although written out of frustration over the thought that "everyone's too damn busy these days".
The album closes with the short one verse song , Gifts , which was first written back in 1968. This is like a short prayer giving thanks to the gift of sharing which Cockburn used to end his shows with. He never recorded it back in the sixties and joked that he wouldn't do so until he released his last album. Now at the age of 66 he has included it here, just in case!
On the sleeve notes Cockburn writes that instead of releasing another set of gentle warm-hearted songs like the ones you find here he had a vision of doing something completely different.
Upon completing his previous studio album (Life Short Call Now) six years ago, he imagined a noise album with fierce distorted guitars but had second thoughts after worrying that he might incite his neighbours to violent acts.
I for one would welcome something as abrasive and out of character as this. We already know he's a decent, honourable human being but Small Source of Comfort can just be added to the list of solid, dependable records he has made over the years.
Sometimes you can be too polite and accommodating. To go out with all guns blazing might at least get him some much deserved attention and could prove to be the catalyst for a long overdue reappraisal of his career.
Bruce Cockburn's Website
|
