Bruce Cockburn records are always of the highest quality; take it as read. They are always musically sophisticated and the guitar playing is always mesmerising. They are always lyrically poetic, images and rhymes always potent and beautiful. There is always likely to be travel and social and geographical comment. He’ll always touch on the political and will always wrap it all in the spiritual. Small Source of Comfort is as always but has more than enough novelties to make it an album in its own right! There are five instrumentals; more than usual. Jenny Scheinman’s violin is a major contributor. There are two co-writes with Annabelle Chvostek. His travel destinations this time are Afghanistan and Brooklyn. Richard Nixon turns up as a women! The last song Gifts is the song Bruce closed concerts with in the sixties and was left off his debut record!
The overall theme of the album is journey. Many of the songs were written as Cockburn drove from his home in Kingston, Ontario to first of all Brooklyn, New York City but then latterly San Francisco where his partner lived. It seems that for Cockburn the road inspires. It has been doing this right throughout his forty year career but on this particular work it is a metaphor for the spiritual life. Boundless was how Cockburn described his view of God in an interview with Cathleen Falsani just a few years ago. As he describes it himself, “the road goes from here to eternity.” Thinking of eternity, Lois On The Autobahn was inspired by his mother Lois’s journey into the afterlife.
Geographically Brooklyn is the place for 5.51 as Toronto, Tokyo and Kathmandu and Baghdad have been in the past. Kandahar was Cockburn’s most recent foreign city and it finds itself honoured with an instrumental Comets Of Kandahar inspired by jet fighters heading out into the dark. Each One Lost is written poignantly about a Ramp Ceremony honouring the remains of two young Canadian Forces members killed in action. It is all Bruce Cockburn travelling towards and away from love and war. It is what this mystical poet and wise sage sees through the Iris of the World. It is always good and this one has particular wisdom and delight.
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