Bruce Cockburn

Item: Christmas
Author: Chris Parks

Christmas

(1993)

Reviewed by Chris Parks

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Label MyrrhThe Phantom Tollbooth1998

acoustic folk rock

As a child, Bruce Cockburn received from his father a home-made book, a collection of Christmas carols. Many of those songs appear on Cockburn's 1993 album, Christmas, to which he adds some weird and wonderful songs he has learned since childhood, and an original composition.

There are several Christmas standards on the album. Cockburn performs "Adeste Fidelis" (O Come, All Ye Faithful) and "Joy to the World" as simple acoustic guitar solos. Cockburn sings Sam Phillips' arrangement of "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear," which transposes the song into a minor key, highlighting the lyrics, especially those of the later, seldom sung verses. Ms. Phillips sings harmony. The arrangement of "Silent Night" takes the song at a faster than normal tempo, but loses nothing of the reverence.

In addition, Cockburn sings several slightly less well known songs and one song of his own. As one would expect, Cockburn doesn't limit himself to songs in English and includes the original French version of "Angels We Have Heard on High." More surprisingly, he also sings "Riu Riu Chiu," in the original Spanish over finger-picked guitars and violin echoing the melodic lines. Even more intriguing is "Iesus Ahatonia," a song in the Huron (Native American) language penned by a Jesuit missionary in the 1600's. To the song's plaintive melody, Cockburn's arrangement adds Hugh Marsh's fiddle textures and chimes. Cockburn's only original, "Shepherds," recounts the story of Christ's birth in Cockburn's own poetic style:

And in the brown-aired town away below
Three travelers reap a star-harvest and then go on their way again.
Gloria, Gloria in the highest.

But the real fun of the album is in the weird and wonderful songs with which Cockburn fills out the album. "Down in Yon Forest," with its archaic lyrical themes and song form, represents the weird; Cockburn's liner notes rightly describe it as a contender for the title of spookiest Christmas carol ever. "Early on One Christmas Morn" represents the wonderful. It is a song from the late 1920's that Cockburn heard on an anthology of early gospel tunes. This rollicking gospel tune features piano, and what sounds like a mandolin even though the liner notes don't mention a mandolin player.

The variety on this album, especially in the mix of familiar songs in unfamiliar musical settings and unfamiliar songs, makes Bruce Cockburn's Christmas something fresh, to be listened to actively rather than put into a CD player as background music.

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