Mostly, Small Source of Comfort

Tuesday, definitely post-Monday, not as light this morning owing to the rain and clouds.  The forecast is all dripping cloud icons into the predicted future, so last night's top-down drive home was probably the last for a while. This morning I followed the over-size trucks rather than being tailgated by them.  Two different trucks proceeded me down the first and then second half of my commute this morning.  Both were working hard to keep their rigs at least five MPH under the posted speed limits, with regular use of breaks to help maintain their go-slow speed (and, no, neither I nor anyone else was riding them, so it was just their own sense of what felt safe and reasonable from their cockpits in the sky).  The silver lining to this very slow procession toward campus was that I had new music to listen to and the extra time simply extended my listening time.

To the one or two (if that many) regular readers of my daily post-commute brain dump who may actually share my interest in what songs my iPod shuffles up and mixes together when left to its own devices, apologies in advance for this morning's playlist.  Bruce Cockburn's 31st album is released today, and my pre-order copy downloaded last night.  I loaded it on the iPod and set said device it to just this album for today.  The album is titled Small Source of Comfort (liner notes and song comments at that link).

Cockburn says, of this album, ""When the last studio album, Life Short Call Now, was released, I felt that it was time for something different. I had a vision of music, electric and noisy, with songs and jackhammers and fiercely distorted guitars. To pursue music like that, you need isolation. In the initial stages at least, there's likely to be more noise than music. It's important not to incite your neighbors to violent acts.

"As things turned out, these last few years have been spent hanging out in urban settings mostly; in apartments where sound travels, with only brief periods of solitude, mostly found doing long distance drives. As a result, what's come out is a collection of folkier, acoustic guitar songs and pieces. Just goes to show, you just never know..."

This album certainly is much more acoustic overall, and in many places it takes me back to some of Cockburn's earlier works.  There is some very good music and musicianship on this album, I would hazard to say it may be one of his best.  Listening to it through for the first time last night I was awash in compelling poetry and amazing guitar work (five of the 14 tracks are instrumental).  Here is just one small sample of the imagery and poetry this album contains, a small description of something seen along the side of a road, from the song Iris of the World:

I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU

on a boulder by the shoulder

the paint will likely outlive

both the feeling and the holder

in the age of Global Warming

when all things are growing colder

it's beautiful the writer

opened up his heart and told her 

Passing through the iris of the world

A simple image, but deftly handled.  Here is the complete lyric from the song Boundless:

Horses in the meadow by the highway side

and a Church of Christ in a double-wide

clouds overhead are ghostly gray

it snowed a little but it didn't stay 

Red-winged blackbird on a mileage sign

ghost town gutted like a dried-up mine

stark faces in the windows of a speeding train

we love our blindness and we love our pain 

Standing by the lake sucking poison mist

lungs clenched tight like an angry fist

picking at sores in the hope they heal

hungry and harrowed and caught in the wheel 

I feel these serpents of desire

ripple my skin like ropes of fire

all I ever wanted, all along,

was to be the "you" in somebody's song 

Seven dances for the spirits

running a race, running a race

seven dances for the saints

running a race, running a race

looking for the stillness in the womb of space

Boundless

Boundless

The howling wind, it sings to me

the sky looks troubled but I feel free

visions and feeling and ink on my hands

you can travel forever and never land 

In the crashing chaos where stars are born

the strong get fed and the weak get torn

look at that cosmos eating its tail

circled like the lip of the holy grail 

Seven dances for the spirits

running a race, running a race

seven dances for the saints

running a race, running a race

looking for the stillness in the womb of space

Boundless

Boundless

I say: good stuff!  Here is the complete drive-in portion of the playlist:

 - Bruce Cockburn: Iris of the World

 - Bruce Cockburn: Boundless

 - Bruce Cockburn: Driving Away

 - Bruce Cockburn: Called Me Back

 - Bruce Cockburn: Radiance