Small Source of Comfort

Description

Small Source of Comfort is the twenty-third studio album – and 33th album overall – by the Canadian singer, songwriter, and guitarist Bruce Cockburn, released on True North Records in March 2011. The album was produced by Colin Linden. Small Source of Comfort won the 2011 Juno for Best Roots Album as well as two awards from the Canadian Folk Awards

Bruce Cockburn records are always of the highest quality; take it as read. They are always musically sophisticated and the guitar playing is always mesmerising. They are always lyrically poetic, images and rhymes always potent and beautiful. There is always likely to be travel and social and geographical comment. He’ll always touch on the political and will always wrap it all in the spiritual. Small Source of Comfort is as always but has more than enough novelties to make it an album in its own right! There are five instrumentals; more than usual. Jenny Scheinman’s violin is a major contributor. There are two co-writes with Annabelle Chvostek. His travel destinations this time are Afghanistan and Brooklyn. Richard Nixon turns up as a women! The last song «Gifts» is the song Bruce closed concerts with in the sixties and was left off his debut record!

The overall theme of the album is journey. Many of the songs were written as Cockburn drove from his home in Kingston, Ontario to first of all Brooklyn, New York City but then latterly San Francisco where his partner lived. It seems that for Cockburn the road inspires. It has been doing this right throughout his forty year career but on this particular work it is a metaphor for the spiritual life. «Boundless» was how Cockburn described his view of God in an interview with Cathleen Falsani just a few years ago. As he describes it himself, “the road goes from here to eternity.” Thinking of eternity, «Lois On The Autobahn» was inspired by his mother Lois’s journey into the afterlife.

Geographically Brooklyn is the place for «5.51» as Toronto, Tokyo and Kathmandu and Baghdad have been in the past. Kandahar was Cockburn’s most recent foreign city and it finds itself honoured with an instrumental «Comets Of Kandahar» inspired by jet fighters heading out into the dark. «Each One Lost» is written poignantly about a Ramp Ceremony honouring the remains of two young Canadian Forces members killed in action. It is all Bruce Cockburn travelling towards and away from love and war. It is what this mystical poet and wise sage sees through the «Iris of the World». It is always good and this one has particular wisdom and delight. [Steve Stockman, Soul Surmise, March 2011]

> Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/small-source-of-comfort/424089055)

CD tracklist:

01. Iris of the World – 3:21
02. Call Me Rose – 3:16
03. Bohemian 3-Step – 4:07
04. Radiance – 4:11
05. Five Fifty-One – 3:34
06. Driving Away – 4:14
07. Lois On the Autobahn – 4:45
08. Boundless – 4:45
09. Called Me Back – 2:41
10. Comets of Kandahar – 4:49
11. Each One Lost – 3:55
12. Parnassus and Fog – 3:25
13. Ancestors – 3:59
14. Gifts – 1:57

Note: Comes in Digipak with separate 20-page colour booklet with lyrics in English and French, credits and photos. Available at Bandcamp: https://brucecockburn.bandcamp.com/album/small-source-of-comfort