Bruce Cockburn – Small Source of Comfort (True North)

Canadian singer/songwriter Bruce Cockburn may be best known for fierce, anthemic rockers like “Lovers in a Dangerous Time” and “If I Had a Rocket Launcher,” but he began his career as a folksinger. Small Source of Comfort, his 25th studio album, hearkens back to those roots, with a variety of easy melodies set in acoustic arrangements that highlight his nimble guitar work as much as his carefully wrought lyrics. “The Iris of the World” opens with driving fingerpicking, a Dylanesque rush of words and the rhythm of a car constantly in motion, while the jazzy “Driving Away” trades the automobile in for a soul. “Five Fifty-One” gives a bemused, bluesy nod to Brooklyn, while “Radiance” pays tribute to the Divine Feminine with a drifting, ethereal melody. “Call Me Rose” ponders the superficial rehabilitation of Richard Nixon to straightforward folk rock, while “Gift” explores the meaning of the spirit with an almost completely open-ended melody. And speaking of wide open, “Boundless” uses its droning tune and swirling libretto to evoke whatever is closest to the listener’s heart, from “All I ever wanted, all along/Was to be the ‘you’ in somebody’s song” to “The sky looks troubled but I feel free.” Several instrumentals pepper the set list as well, and while they frankly don’t hold as much appeal as the vocal tracks, they don’t kill the momentum, either. Mixing the personal, the political and the spiritual so seamlessly as to make the stitches invisible, Cockburn takes us on a journey through his musical psyche that leaves the brain, the heart and the eardrums better for the experience.

http://www.brucecockburn.com
http://www.truenorth.com