Burton Cummings’ new album, A Few Good Moments, proves that Winnipeg’s favorite Northend son is still rockin’ and “goin’ a little crazy” but, thankfully, that “ain’t too bad.”
This is his first album of new material since 2008’s superb Above the Ground. Of course, Cummings is the vocalist extraordinaire of (the real!) Guess Who, the band that graced the ’70s American airwaves with “These Eyes,” “Undone,” “Laughing,” “No Time,” “American Woman,” “Hand Me Down World,” “Share the Land,” “Albert Flasher,” and “Star Baby,” while releasing a series of brilliant albums.
His solo career began with three immaculate albums but then ran into troubled waters with Woman Love, a record the corporation suits didn’t like and did their best to bury in the U.S. market. For the record (pun intended!), this is a brilliant Burton album with his rock ’n’ roll recipe of great songwriting, humor, absurdly high-flying trapeze vocalizing, touching insight, tough guitar smoke, a lyrical lesson or too, and delightfully weird cover art. Other albums of equal quality like Heart, Sweet Sweet, Plus Signs, and Above the Ground leaked through the Canadian pipeline. Good for us!
A Few Good Moments has already been released on Sept. 27 in digital and streaming formats. The compact disc and two-disc vinyl set will be available on Nov. 15. Along the way, Burton Cummings sings everything in the known universe. To quote the Guess Who album So Long, Bannatyne, this will “buy a power mower for the lawn.” A great rock song can do just that.
The first three break out with a volley of energy. “A Few Good Moments” rocks hard and blends personal and historical tragedies, yet it provides redemption in those “few good men” who managed to “undo a lot of the harm that’s been done.” Then, in the eye of the triad, “Ain’t No More” plays the big melody card, as Cummings (with nice self-deprecation), once again slips a bit of existentialism into a pop song. Yes, there’s still philosophical “life in the bloodstream” of rock ’n’ roll.
To quote John Fogerty’s “Hot Rod Heart,” the cover of “Shape I’m In” (thank you Marc Benno, Doyle Bramhall and Doyle Bramhall II) has a “big ol’ ’gater” and is “puttin’ on the zoom,” roaring with a duck-walked youthful dance floor big-bashed strut.
Of course, a Burton Cummings album is laced with melodic piano-graced introspective songs. “Break Away” touches a vulnerable heart, with a sublime vocal and lovely acoustic guitar. Cummings writes with emotional colors, like “any mother’s silver teardrops,” even though he “thought that stuff was invisible.” And “Speak to Me” swells with comfort, which is just “an honest song for the people tonight.” Signature high notes are still on his vocal paintbrush palette.
“My Rhythm and My Rhyme” is even better, with the purity of its gorgeous “Heavenly Blue” melody and wonderful glance at “The Ballad of the Last Five Years,” from the Road Food album, where Burton sang, “There’s no sense denying that’s your best reason on Earth for crying/Those days will never be ‘round again.” Indeed, “Where does the time go?” The irresistible pop song “Sanity” may be an ode to Moose Jaw, once mentioned in the Guess Who song “Runnin’ Back to Saskatoon,” and is now Burton’s preferred locale instead of the big-city L.A. life. Good for him.
But Cummings always finds his “own way to rock.” The dramatic “Magic Town” (co-written with Michael Zweig) hangs in dark air where “dreams come crashing down.” “Heard It On the News” is a terse chronicle of rock star deaths: John Bonham, John Lennon, and Jim Morrison get special mention in the tune’s winding turbulence. The idiosyncratic lyric of “Peace Corps Baby” deals with the loss of love, innocence, and “a pain in my heart,” while the music (with pedal steel) curls through a sad labyrinth of memory.
“Up to the Minute” gets deliciously keyboard funky, with a sidewinding blues-fired electric guitar solo and an open-throttled vocal. The song stirs its spices into nice musical gumbo. There are more blues: “Blackjack Fever” rocks with the freewheeling verve of Guess Who circa Road Food’s “Atilla’s Blues.” Ditto for “Yo, John,” with its driving wheel pulse and wonderfully weird backing vocals. And by the way, thank you Carpet Frogs!
The “best of the better” (which was the original title for my favorite Guess Who song, “Broken”) is “Arrogance,” a self-deprecating track that deals with fame, yet conjures his days “when you could walk to the park and hear the Deverons play.” The song contemplates, to quote the poet e.e. cummings (no relation!), “the bigness of his littleness.” Burton Cummings once advised, “you must be curious” in his song “Free.” It’s the same sort of wisdom.
Cummings then covers Gram Parsons’ “Sin City,” which reminds us all that “on the 31st floor a gold plated door won’t keep out the Lord’s burning rain.” It’s an oddly perfect rock ’n’ roll fit. A Few Good MomentsCanned Wheat, in 1969 that Burton Cummings would still today be rocking a “Mile a Minute” – and, even after all these years still make me ask, “Whatever happened to early morning urban skies? And those broken faces, half with broken eyes.” A Few Good Moments sings a similar sentiment, and while this music is still “goin’ a little crazy,” as said, it “ain’t too bad.”
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