Rounder / Umgd
2006
Life Short Call Now
About This Album
Bruce Cockburn displayed his aesthetic restlessness with his instrumental album Speechless in 2005. Those who have followed his career over the past four decades wondered where he would go next, or indeed if there was anywhere he could go. The question has been answered in spades on Life Short Call Now. Along with his regular band, Cockburn has employed an orchestral 27-piece string section to expressionistically color a good number of these 12 songs with help from producer Jon Goldsmith. Lyrically, Cockburn has returned to the terrain he alone inhabits: intimate observations of the personal, the spiritual, the sociopolitical and environmental concerns. As is also his wont, there are no sloganeering anthems in these songs. From the title track that opens the album, he looks across the Montreal landscape and observes it, not in a journalistic way, but as someone inside it, and asks poignantly. "Can one man fit in a normal life?" The solitary person in the midst of unions, holy and unholy, can find no way to properly say goodbye or welcome. Ani DiFranco sings backing vocals on "See You Tomorrow," where Cockburn turns the tables on himself as he observes a mercenary, and though he understands the man's empty soul he envies his freedom from guilt to accomplish his task.
Track List (try tracks 5,6 and 10)

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