Reviewed by Andy Long

I was travelling home from a gig recently and listening to the Bob Harris show. This brought good news and bad news - the good news was that Bruce Cockburn was coming in for a live session, sadly the bad news was that I had missed his recent British dates. I'm one of those people who would crawl over broken glass to get to a Bruce Cockburn gig so I was a bit gutted about that - ah well! I think this is Bruce's 29th album since his self-titled 1969 debut. Whilst many songwriters will have either retired or gone completely off the boil by now, Cockburn just keeps getting better. Now that he's sixty-plus he still has that razor-sharp lyrical ability and the insight to see through political debate and get to the heart of the matter. At the same time he can still write quirky, humorous songs, like the title track here, inspired by a journey through Missouri, reading the billboards along the way and spotting one that read "Mike's tattoos done while you wait!" Several of the songs on this album were written after Bruce made a trip to Baghdad in 2004 and lyrics like "Tell the universe what you've done, out in the desert with your smoking gun" are classic Cockburn political commentary. "This Is Baghdad" is the most obviously outraged track on this theme, it's lyrics packed with biting criticisms. The songs are interspersed with some beautiful instrumentals, my favourite of which is the album closer, a cool jazz piece called "Nude Descending A Staircase".

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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