CD Odyssey Disc 504: Jim Cuddy

I’m just home from a whirlwind after work mission that included replacing my guitar capo with one that works (lesson tonight) and picking up my parcel from Amazon where I got four new CDs – just what I needed.

Those new CDs  run the gamut, from early nineties rap (EPMD’s “Business as Usual”), to sixties soul (the Chamber Brothers’ “The Time Has Come”) to modern alternative folk music (Neko Case’s “The Virginian” and The Staves’ “Dead & Born & Grown.”)

I’m looking forward to listening to all of them, and eventually reviewing them, but none of those are today’s albums.

Disc 504 is… The Light That Guides You Home

Artist: Jim Cuddy

Year of Release: 2006

What’s up with the Cover?  A street just after sunset.  I don’t recognize the city, but my guess would be somewhere in Canada.  The streetlights may be the lights that guide you home, but it is more likely to be the lamp on top of the taxi, especially after you’ve had a few.

How I Came To Know It:  I think I bought this as a gift for Sheila, since she is a big Blue Rodeo fan.  I remembered liking his first solo album (“All in Time”) and so this seemed a safe bet.

How It Stacks Up:  We have two of Jim Cuddy’s three solo albums (I noted that we’re missing his 2011 release, “Skyscraper Soul”) and I like both of them.  I’d like to say I prefer “All In Time” but I don’t put either one on that often.  I haven’t reviewed “All in Time” yet, but in writing this section I gave the tracks a quick preview and my initial reaction was that “The Light That Guides You Home” is slightly better.  We’ll see if that holds up when I give “All In Time” a full, fair shake but for now “The Light That Guides You Home” takes number one.

Rating:  3 stars but almost 4

Jim Cuddy is one of those artists that will have a lasting impression on the Canadian music scene for decades to come.  When I listen to more recent acts like Luke Doucet and Matt Mays I can hear his influences already rippling outward – and although he’s mostly a domestic phenomenon I expect singer/songwriters around the world that are in the know will come to know him, if not general audiences.

As you will likely know, Cuddy is mostly famous for being one of the principal members of the band Blue Rodeo (the other being Greg Keelor).  Cuddy is the part of Blue Rodeo that is more firmly rooted on the folk and country side of the ledger, and so as a solo album, “The Light That Guides You Home” is unsurprisingly more to that side of the Blue Rodeo sound.

That happens to be my favoured side of the Blue Rodeo sound, so this suits me well.  I generally prefer the band together, but this is a solid effort that stands up well against his Blue Rodeo discography – and is better than some of it.

I’ve mentioned it in previous reviews, but it bears repeating that Cuddy’s voice is a instrument.  It is so angst-ridden and powerful, and he can still hit the high notes on this album despite it coming out almost twenty years after Blue Rodeo first landed on the scene in 1987.  It is a voice meant for singing about the hurt and heartache inside us all, and on “The Light That Guides You Home” Cuddy wisely does just that.

Songs like “Maybe Sometime,” and “Will I Be Waiting” catch the oft-considered themes of regret and lost love.  They are songs that hearken back to a simpler time, when there was room to grow into love with someone.  With success, schedules become cramped and people grow apart.  The old ally Time becomes that menacing winged chariot Marvel warns his coy mistress about in the old poem; replacing bliss with deserts of lost opportunity.  As Cuddy puts it in “Will I Be Waiting”: 

“I don’t know where we go from this point on

So many hours are lost and days that are gone

When you come around again

Will I be waiting?

Well some things are hard to explain

Anticipating

That loneliness finds a way

Of changing your mind.”

For all those pressures, the album is balanced in its approach to love, and Cuddy avoids becoming maudlin with sweet love songs like “All I Need,” “The Light That Guides You Home” and “Pull Me Through.”  These songs – which outnumber the doubt-filled ones – show an optimism that love can conquer such sad little obstacles as time and distance.

Of all of these, my favourite is “Pull Me Through” which focuses on piano and Cuddy’s beautiful voice, painting life’s small but myriad challenges and how his woman will always pull him through.  The lyrics are basic, and even overused, as the object of his affection “takes the sting out of the rain” and “brings the sun back up again” but with the sparse production and Cuddy’s vocal delivery, it feels like he’s invented the concepts rather than just borrowed them.

It is funny that this is one of my favourite songs, because one of the things I love about Cuddy that goes underappreciated is his exceptional skill on guitar, and “Pull Me Through” not only doesn’t feature that, it has an oddly placed saxophone solo in the bridge that would ordinarily enrage me.  However, Cuddy uses it subtly, like an early Tom Waits song; letting the horn caress the song rather than misuse it.  Hey Sting – take a lesson here.  I don’t care if you have Wynton Marsalis – a little sax goes a long way.

Finally, this album shows Cuddy’s playful side, with fun-filled tracks like “Countrywide Soul” and “Married Again.” I’ll admit these aren’t my favourite songs but I can’t deny that “Married Again” is as catchy as it is goofy.  It tells the story of a couple that is terrible for one another but that keep getting drunk together and waking up to find they married each other again.  As Cuddy wisely notes:

“Sixteen bottles and a wedding trunk

Oughtta be a law against marrying drunk.”

Of course there is such a law, Jim – but maybe they were in Vegas.  They do things differently down there, I’m told.

All of the music, whether it is sorrowful, resilient or just plain fun, displays Cuddy’s mastery of song construction.  As I learn to play the guitar I’m finding that while a lot of country music has very similar chord progressions, how you put them together makes all the difference in the world.  If the songs sound similar to a lot of his Blue Rodeo work, that’s just because they sound good.

Best tracks:  Maybe Sometime, Pull Me Through, Will I Be Waiting, She Gets Down, Falling, What She Said