Bruce Cockburn

Item: You've Never Seen Everything
Author: Steve Stockman

You've Never Seen Everything

(2003)

Reviewed by Steve Stockman

Discogs Apple Music TIDAL Amazon Music Spotify YouTube Music

Label Rounder RecordsThe Phantom Tollbooth2003

folk rock roots rock singer-songwriter

Yes, it has arrived. Every few years we get another Bruce Cockburn album, the food that our wee souls desire, and here is another lavish banquet of wordsmithery, not just clever in the literary sense but nearly nine months pregnant with social observation, political clout, and spiritual provocation.

Few, nay no one, gives this kind of content for money in a record of songs. Everything that we hope for in Cockburn is present and correct on this his first album of new tunes since 1999's Breakfast in New Orleans, Dinner in Timbuktu. There is the personal soul searching discovery as on "Tried and Tested" and "Wait No More". There is the obligatory postcard from somewhere, this time it literally is titled "Postcard from Cambodia: a travelogue lament from Asia" to add to his previous despatches from Nicaragua, Mozambique, Nepal, Chile and Eastern Europe. All come with a vicious indictment on humanity's inability to live right in regard to our neighbors. A close relation here is the title track with its catalogue of inhumanitarian acts. Both are spoken word pieces, littered with that descriptive detail of streets and sunsets and the living on and below the two. In the latter there are a little too graphic account of some violent acts, too!

There are two recurring themes on this album. First, the dark side. On "All Our Dark Tomorrows," he sings:

I can see in the dark -- it's where I used to live
I see excess and the gaping need
Follow the money -- see where it leads
It's to shrunken men stuffed up with greed

That greed permeates the record. "Trickle Down" is about the deadly delusion that capitalism so diseased will trickle down sustenance for all. On "You've Never Seen Everything," it is the leaders of business who lead the leaders.

But the bright side is that never before has a Cockburn album been so riddled with light. Obviously his Christian faith has brought hopefulness and never so abundant. On "Celestial Horses," "there's a darkness in the Canyon/But the light comes pounding through for me and for you." "Don't Forget About Delight" is a reminder that no matter how stranded or alone, there is still light pounding through and "Everywhere Dance" that "in the ebb and flow of death and birth/In wounded streets and whispered prayer/The dance is the truth...and it's everywhere." We close with the "Messenger Wind" and it is "sweeping out of the sky/Lights each tiny speck in the human kaleidoscope/with hope."

Lyrically, it is as always brilliant. Where I question St. Bruce on this album is that musically it is a little dense. Too few melodies or songs of the "Pacing The Cage" kind. The poetic intensity is always in need of those one or two little gentle moments and I am not sure that where he has tried to contemporise the songs that it ever really works. It can too frequently sound like one of his eighties albums. Of course there is nothing wrong with that, but I am not sure that it is completely satisfactory either.

Can you tell that I am struggling to find the confidence to criticise. I would just like to get T-Bone Burnett back for an album. Or even more interestingly Daniel Lanois. We have all kinds of guests appearing here from Sam Phillips to Emmylou Harris (imagine Emmylou guesting!!!), the frogs of Zambia and Jackson Browne. There's another possible producer; Jackson Browne. Or maybe Ani DiFranco. Just shake it up a little next time Bruce. We love it but we want to really, really love it!

3.5 tocks