#132
1980 Housekeeping
Bruce Cockburn
Humans
Genre: Like a lesser child of Warren Zevon and Mark Knopfler
3.75 pout of 5
Highlights:
How I Spent My Fall Vacation
You know who is the heir to Cockburn with his repetitive rhythms and his kind of singing but really just barely getting there? John Darnielle. At least on this record. It’s the same poetic observational perspective and the dull music. But Darnielle traffics in a lacerating pain that comes through his songs and Cockburn is less confessional than he is a commentator on society and it’s ills. In the long run I prefer what Darnelle does because he can drag me to tears (The Sunset Tree, an annual listen that just wrecks me) where Bruce makes me go, “hmmm….yeah, people are like that…”
But with Cockburn, since he’s singing about societal and human conditions from a 30,000 foot view instead of Darnielle’s onion skin shedding honesty, you either buy in to Bruce’s world view and decide to go with him on that journey or you don’t. And if you don’t all that’s left is okay music, good playing and a singer who really isn’t great. I love bad rock and roll voices more than anything (looking at you, Gordon Gano) but if there’s nothing to sing along to and you aren’t inspired by the songs, it plays poorly.
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