Eclectic and rootsy seventh album from Canadian singer/songwriter.
Canadian singer Dave McCann recorded this album down in Mississippi, the state which, for the last century, has helped acts cook up a gumbo of music that eventually became known as americana. Across this nine-track set, McCann’s seventh, he introduces rock, blues and folk sonics into a cohesive sound, singing in a plain, unadorned voice.
As you can tell from the track titles alone, nature has inspired the settings of the songs. ‘Rolling Down The Mountain’ (“like a train bound for nowhere”) is an appealingly rootsy opening track whose chugging guitar contrasts musically with the sparse acoustic ‘River Deep Blues’ (“gonna come what may”). There’s plenty to hook the listener on ‘Pascagoula River’, which is based on a looping chord progression in a major key; certain phrases leap out of the lyric sheet, including “ramshackle heart”, “cottonmouth crown” and “Confederate bones”.
‘When The Crows Come to Carry Me Home’ is a call to action for the listener to “let your songs be sung so loud that they rattle loose the door”. There’s an unexpected and lovely piano line that joins the song before the final chorus, which recurs on ‘Tupelo Rain’, another song which is driven by an upbeat chord progression. The toe-tapper ‘Friends’ comes close to the work of Jeff Tweedy and Wilco, with an added mandolin solo; in the final verse, those friends “don’t have much time left” and are “sick and tired of this same damn song”. Even McCann’s perkier songs are filled with pessimism.
‘Angola’, a menacing prison song with a growling electric guitar running through it, is the album’s centrepiece. It is told through a narrator who “went and used up all my chances” and wants the spirit to “hold me in the current” of the river. ‘Yonder’ anchors its complaints of “the ghosts of what we used to be” to a sing-along chorus of “I’ll see you yonder”.
Album closer ‘Lots of Things’ ambles through a set of mood-setting stanzas about the sun, moon and stars, with egg-shaker percussion and bright acoustic guitar. Far from being the soothsayer of the album’s title, McCann ends with a winningly innocent naivety about the world.
