Sunset Boulevard Records
ROBIN KEARNS
There’s a moment in the guitar picking that opens the first track on Bruce Cockburn’s The Blood of Others that sounds almost like the beginning of Wondering Where the Lions Are, his career launching song released 47 years ago. With this engaging collection there’s no wondering about Bruce’s early influences.
In the years since that breakout album Dancing in the Dragon’s Jaws Bruce has been a standard bearer for Canadian music: an observant lyricist and a guitarist as well as staunch advocate for indigenous rights and global justice issues. He began as the Ottawa valley folkie singing of quiet earthy aspirations as in songs like Gavin’s Woodpile and Goin’ to the Country.
Then in the ‘80s he summoned a band and a bolder muse, sharpened the blade of political critique and released hard-hitting albums like The Trouble With Normal (1983) and Stealing Fire (1984). (His song from that era, Call it Democracy, is worth a listen for its prescience today). Yet if anger found a way into his oeuvre, it’s always been countered by a mysticism, an understated non-preachy Christianity, evident in album titles like World of Wonders (1986) and O Sun O Moon (2023).
And now we have The Blood of Others, a generous 15-track not-quite covers album, whose title references a Simone de Beauvoir novel dealing with freedom and responsibility as war approaches. The songs seem not-quite covers because while none of this collection is penned by Cockburn the songs are reworked and reinterpreted. Lyrics are even updated: in Time Goes By he sings of robot interventions and we’ve grown a bit weary with AI and quantum theory (whimsy has always been a Cockburn hallmark; in the 90s he often ended live shows with Monty Python’s Always Look on the Bright Side of Life)
The songs are delivered in the measured voice of his advanced years and carried along by his brilliant guitar picking. In the artist’s words, it’s a collection of material, written by others, that I found sticking to the edges of my musical landscape. And it sure is varied. Billie Holliday, Elvis Presley, Mississippi John Hurt. His take on Ian Tyson’s Four Strong Winds is a standout. There’s a boldness in taking on such a well-known song. Whereas Neil Young’s version was light and breezy, Cockburn’s is slow and deliberate, reflective of the vantage point of a man in his 80s rather than the carefree spirit of Young who released his version in his 30s.
The bluesy Buddy Bolden’s Blues has Bruce offering a lilting guitar melody and a raspy vocalisation that could be encountered under a veranda in New Orleans (fellow Canadian Michael Ondaatje’s Coming Through Slaughter makes good complementary reading).
Another great track, God Bless the Child, is beautifully and plaintively delivered. A song Bruce tells us he first encountered on a Harry Belafonte album bought at the age of 15.
A scrapbook of memories and significances. These are standout songs given a fresh take by a master of the guitar and vocal subtlety. A man into his ninth decade sharing songs that are worthy of not only remembrance but a reworking.
The cover: a lone chair and acoustic guitar. A stripped back image that speaks to these carefully chosen and delivered tracks from the elder statesman of Canadian music.
Robin Kearns
The Blood of Others is due out Oct 16th on Sunset Boulevard Records
