“Time takes its toll, but in my soul I’m on a
roll,” Bruce Cockburn sings on his latest studio album, O Sun O Moon. Smart and
catchy, it’s the kind of memorable line—like “gotta kick at the darkness ’til
it bleeds daylight” from his classic song “Lovers in a Dangerous Time”—the
world has become used to hearing from Cockburn.
An inspired poet and exceptional guitarist,
the award-winning artist has spent his entire career kicking at the darkness
with songs that tackle topics from politics and human rights to the environment
and spirituality. And he’s not letting up. While other singer-songwriters his
age are slowing down, Cockburn, on the eve of his 78 th birthday, has released
a dozen new compositions as powerful as any he’s written. You could even say
his songwriting is on a roll as well.
Exquisitely recorded in Nashville with his
longtime producer, Colin Linden, O Sun O Moon exudes a newfound simplicity and
clarity, as Cockburn focuses on more spiritual than topical concerns this time
around, looking back and taking stock. “I think it’s a product of age to a
certain extent,” he explains, “and seeing the approaching horizon.” Then,
lightening the tone, he adds with a laugh: “I think these are exactly the kind
of songs that an old guy writes.”
Old or not, Cockburn exhibits a palpable
urgency on the opening “On a Roll,” playing a driving resonator guitar with all
the vigor of his veteran blues heroes. Similarly “To Keep the World We Know,”
one of the album’s few explicitly topical numbers, bristles with Cockburn’s
buzzing dulcimer as he and Inuk music star Susan Aglukark, with whom he
co-wrote the song, sing about the growing threat of global warming.
Still, most of the songs strike gentler tones,
from the jazz sway of “Push Come to Shove” and the folky drone of “Into the
Now” to the string-laden “Us All” and the hymn-like “Colin Went Down to the
Water.” The latter, one of several songs Cockburn wrote while on a month-long
holiday with family on the Hawaiian island of Maui, describes the drowning of a
friend. “It’s not about Colin Linden,” Cockburn is quick to point out, “but
someone I knew from San Francisco who’d
moved to Maui. It was tragic and quite surreal
because I got a voicemail message from him when I was in Maui, saying ‘Welcome
to paradise,’ and then found out afterward that he’d died.”
Speaking of surreal, another song written
while in Maui, the whimsical “King of the Bolero,” is unlike anything else on
the album. Over a woozy clarinet and drunken, New Orleans-style horns, Cockburn
paints a cartoon portrait of an oversized barroom musician “with a double chin
all the way round his neck and a pot belly in the back.” Is it a dream or a
figment of his imagination? In a gravelly voice, Cockburn leaves us guessing as
he sings “it’s moon high noon—I’m not in my
Bed.”
“The people I was with in Maui were quite
perplexed when they heard that song,” muses Cockburn. “After hearing the other
things I’d written there, they wondered ‘where did that come from?’ It really
came from out of the blue. I remembered when I was in high school one of my
friends made a crack about an old blues singer who used to come through who he
said had a double chin in the back. It was a funny thing to hear at the time
and it stayed with me. I didn’t want to make it specifically about a black blues
guy, so I mention Minnesota Fats and Fatty
Arbuckle as well as Fats Domino and Fats
Waller.”
As with so many Cockburn albums, the
musicianship on O Sun O Moon is superb. Along with usual suspects Linden on
guitar, Janice Powers on keyboards and Gary Craig on drums, the album features
bassist Viktor Krauss, drummer Chris Brown, accordionist Jeff Taylor, violinist
Jenny Scheinman and multi-instrumentalist Jim Hoke. And Cockburn’s guest
vocalists include Shawn Colvin, Buddy Miller as well as mellifluous singers
Allison Russell, Sarah Jarosz and Ann and Regina McCrary, daughters of gospel
great Rev. Samuel McCrary, one of the founders of the Fairfield Four. The
McCrary sisters shine brightest on the title track, whose full name is “O Sun
By Day O Moon By Night.” They sing the euphoric chorus of the song which
relates, during spoken verses, a dream Cockburn had in which he makes the
journey to heaven. “In the dream, which was really powerful,” says Cockburn, “I
see myself silhouetted on a ridge with this jar of blood pouring it on the
soil. It wasn’t scary or disturbing at all.” Cockburn adds that he wrote the
line “and if that sun and moon don’t shine” in the spirit of songs from the
folk ballad “Mockingbird” to the blues number “Bo Diddley.”
The album’s jazzy closer, “When You Arrive,”
finds Cockburn confessing to feeling his age when he sings “You’re limping like
a three-legged canine, backbone creaking like a cheap shoe.” But it’s clearly a
song of acceptance, about eventually slipping one’s mortal coil, as he’s joined
on the chorus by all of his guest vocalists, singing “bells will ring when you
arrive.”
O Sun O Moon includes just one song without
vocals, “Haiku,” a four-minute showcase of Cockburn’s fleet-fingered guitar
work, where his previous studio recording, 2019’s Crowing Ignites, was a
collection of all instrumental numbers. In between those albums, Cockburn, the
Order of Canada recipient, 13-time Juno Award winner and Canadian Music Hall of
Fame inductee released a 50th anniversary box set, greatest hits package and
rarities collection.
Never one to rest on his laurels—even when, as
he notes, “time takes its toll,” Cockburn keeps finding and conquering new
challenges, never repeating himself in the process. “I just don’t want to ever
keep doing the same thing,” he says. “I’m grateful that I can keep on doing
anything at this point,” he adds. “My body doesn’t hold up and perform the way
it once did.”
That may be so. But the legendary musician has
just made his 38 th studio album. And it may stand as one of his best of his
long and storied career.