Small Source of Comfort - Bruce Cockburn Album Review

Bruce Cockburn

Image: brucecockburn.com

Album Review

It's hard to believe that, on the strength of this album, Bruce Cockburn has slipped under many people's radars in the UK for nigh on 40 years.

Admittedly, my only dalliance with this criminally over-looked poet and performer were his '80s albums, "The Trouble With Normal" (a mate owned a copy on cassette - it sounded like it was recorded in barrel) and "Big Circumstance", an album I played in the Our Price shop I was working in - I remember liking it, but not enough to tear me away from my then-world of indie music. How times change.

I realise he's got quite a fevered following full of fervour for their hero, so I'll choose my words wisely as a Cockburn near-virgin.

Basically, his 31st album is pretty darned good. Kicking off with the spiritually and almost self-deprecating "Iris Of The World", you immediately realise you're in good company, especially with wry observations like "I'm good at blowing holes in things and ranting in self-doubt" and "I've got a way with time and space/but numbers freak me out" - blimey, I can almost relate to that.

I get the impression Cockburn is all about soul-searching, given the reflective mood of some of the songs on here. "Driving Away", written with ex-Wailin' Jenny Annabelle Chvostek, is a case in point with it's rain-swept and furrowed brow - it could almost sit on a Blue Nile album in fact. "Radiance" is also a rather down-beat jazz torch-song looking for a soul-mate, written by Cockburn at the wheel of his car (well, I'm sure he pulled over first, law-lords).

But for every blanket of gloom, there's a chink of sunlight and Cockburn masters both very well. Humour appears in spades on "Call Me Rose", a poignant tale of what Richard Nixon might be thinking if he was resurrected as a girl, while on "Called Me Back" he rues an unreturned phone call with the barbed line "I coulda been croaking on the floor of my flat/the bugger never called me back".

Add in some measured instrumental work as on the fine "Lois On The Autobahn" and "Bohemian 3-Step", and you have a consistently rewarding collection that demands repeated listening.

Paul Pledger