7 June 2003, by Wilfred Langmaid -
Bruce Cockburn's You've Never Seen Everything is a profound work of
genius. Standing ably beside anything he had produced in a 30 year-
plus career, it sees him unleash every one of his many gifts as a
songsmith and sage, all the while seamlessly incorporating new
wrinkles into his sound.
The album, his 27th, is in stores Tuesday. [10 June 2003]
The obvious first thing that many will derive from this album is a
political tone reminiscent of his mid-80s trilogy of albums The
Trouble With Normal, Stealing Fire, and World Of Wonders. In short,
the targets are warmongering and basic human greed. The album is
light years removed from, say, the love songs of 1994's Dart To The
Heart.
While that fact is true, You've Never Seen Everything balances the
righteous indignation that marked those works with a more loving
tone. In that sense, You've Never Seen Everything is a neat move from
the introspective 1996 album The Charity Of Night. The observations
are balanced by self-examination, and the overall message by Cockburn
at age 57 is one of hope.
Still, the strident voice for human justice and the affirmation of
the basic dignity of all people marks key tracks. Using the spoken
word stanza / sung chorus technique that he began employing in the
early 80s, a song like All Our Dark Tomorrows fuses world rhythms
with his textbook minor chord-based mid-tempo groove while targeting
greed. Always a devastating wordsmith, he speaks with boldness and
acuity.
In Trickle Down, the target is again greed, but this time the
catalyst for Cockburn's indignation is last summer's G-8 conference
held in Alberta, where 8 world leaders concocted what Cockburn
calls "bank vault utopia padded for the few". The musical
stretches made, however, are exciting. Here, Cockburn collaborates
with avant-garde jazz pianist Andy Milne, and he flies both on his
guitar and on the rapped vitriole of his stanzas - sort of a modern-
day Subterranean Homesick Blues done up by a crack jazz band.
Meanwhile, the personal chronicle Tried And Tested which opens the
album features stanzas that are more a straight rap, balanced by the
sung part of the three-word-mantra chorus which is the song title.
Travel to other lands was the spark behind Cockburn's first political
gems. The newest song in this idiom is the chilling Postcards From
Cambodia. His acute eye, quick mind, and bold voice make the horror
of the killing fields come alive.
A wider spectrum of images bridging both the years and the continents
marks the title track. Canadian references include a bizarre
murder/suicide in Toronto and a one-line observation in an early
stanza "and the Mounties are strip-searching schoolgirls because they
can". All of the images in each stanza conclude with the veteran
observer reminding a jaded world "you've never seen everything".
All of the horror, all of the observation, and all of the rage on
such pieces becomes tolerable, and the songs ultimately uplifting,
because of the hope that under-girds these songs unlike earlier
Cockburn work in this vein. It tends to appear in the words of the
sung choruses that partner the spoken word narratives. To wit, the
horror of Cambodia that Cockburn chronicles leads him to ultimately
conclude:
"This is too big for anger
It's too big for blame
We stumble through history so humanly lame
So I bow down my head
Say a prayer for us all
That we don't fear the spirit when it comes to call."
Similarly, the same Cockburn finishes his lists of the lunacies of
our modern age and rants against greed and globalization in the title
track by saying "Here I sit, staring at my own shadow, feeling my
blood move, trying not to have a drink, trying to find somewhere to
put the rage I'm carrying", only to then realize a greater power in
the late sung chorus:
"Bad pressure coming down
Tears - what we really traffic in
Ride the ribbon of shadow
Never feel the light falling all around."
Realistically, these sorts of songs are more for the seasoned
Cockburn fan, but that fan base could well grow, especially
stateside, with concurrent distribution of this album by True North
Records charter member Cockburn on the fellow Universal label
Rounder Records. A song like
However, the album's shining star of a hit - one that would be a
multi-format super-hit in a just and proper world - is Put It In Your
Heart. Cut from the tapestry of mid-tempo, grooving pop with hooks
and bite that delivered would-be hits Lovers In A Dangerous Time in
1984 and A Dream Like Mine in 1991, it is Cockburn's response to the
horror of September 11, 2001. In a 2002 concert, he introduced the
piece by saying "This particular song was triggered not so much by
the event itself, which was horrible but not that surprising if you'd
spent time in the rest of the world, but by the aftermath of it." In
the song, he describes such acts of horror as "surely ... expressions
of a soul that's turned its back on love". He reminds the listener
and, ultimately, himself of the fact that we are all in this
together:
"Heaven's perfect alchemy
Put me with you and you with me
Come on, put it in your heart."
While seeing this as a hit all over the radio waves might be a
stretch, if Cockburn can have hope, so can I.