High Winds White Sky [Bonus Tracks]

High Winds White Sky [Bonus Tracks]

by Bruce CockburnBruce Cockburn

Overview

A remarkably fresh and timeless recording, Bruce Cockburn's second album concentrates far more on roots music than its predecessor. There's the ragtime blues of "Happy Good Morning Blues," the ambitious minor-key troubadour folk of "Love Song," and the slide guitar country of "One Day I Walk" to kick things off. And over the album's original ten songs it just becomes more ambitious. "Golden Serpent Blues," with its poignant and percussive piano lines, is something out of a Western Canadian barrelhouse where the piano player has heard and loved "Lady Madonna." Overall, however, this album -- like Sunwheel Dance that follows it -- presents a far more mystical Cockburn. His tenderness and poetic vision are almost pastoral on these early recordings, something that would get burned off and become hard-bitten (if no less romantic and more dramatic) as his music and social vision grew. [The two bonus tracks, "Totem Pole" and "Elephant Walk," could have been left off, allowing the beautifully remastered sound to stand on its own. Recorded live in 1970 at a coffeehouse, they are lyrically clever and the guitar playing is phenomenal even then, but they are poorly recorded and sung, sending a restrained yet lush recording out on an angular bent. It's easy to program these tracks out, as they add little if anything in terms of enlightenment regarding Cockburn's aesthetic development.]

Product Details

Release Date: 04/07/2009
Label: True North
UPC: 0620638031629
catalogNumber: 316
Rank: 53560

Tracks

  1. Happy Good Morning Blues
  2. Let Us Go Laughing
  3. Love Song
  4. One Day I Walk
  5. Golden Serpent Blues
  6. High Winds White Sky
  7. You Point to the Sky
  8. Life's Mistress
  9. Ting/The Cauldron
  10. Shining Mountain
  11. Totem Pole
  12. It's an Elephant World

Album Credits

Customer Reviews