http://www.canoe.ca/JamAlbumsL/light...rmony-sun.html
Hail Harmony
By DARRYL STERDAN
Winnipeg Sun
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HARMONY
Gordon Lightfoot
(Linus/Warner)
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We've heard of life imitating art, but this is spooky. More than a few of the songs on Gordon Lightfoot's melancholy 20th album Harmony are filled with images of mortality, loss and regret.
Sure, that's what you'd expect from a guy who nearly died from an abdominal aneurysm back in 2002 -- except that these songs were written and partly recorded before the Canadian folk legend's illness. Oooo-weeee-oooo! (Cue Twilight Zone theme here.)
Whether Gordo had an inkling trouble was coming, only he can say. All we can tell you is that these 11 cuts -- most built around Lightfoot's demos and completed under his supervision from hospital -- are some of his most darkly beautiful and emotionally pointed compositions in ages.
His voice as weathered and inviting as an old porch, Lightfoot laments lost loves, reflects on wrong turns along life's long journey and even salutes his home town of Orillia, quietly strumming his acoustic guitar as his band tastefully fleshes out his spare arrangements.
And when he sings shiver-inducing lines like, "I won't be lookin' up old friends ... ever again," it's with the calm certainty of a man in perfect harmony with his life -- and his art.
Track Listing
1. Harmony
2. River Of Light
3. Flyin' Blind
4. No Mistake About It
5. End Of All Time
6. Shellfish
7. The No Hotel
8. Inspiration Lady
9. Clouds Of Loneliness
10. Couchiching
11. Sometimes I Wish
