Gordon Lightfoot

A Painter Passing Through

It grows on you!

Review Score:

(8/10)
For those of us who fell in love with Gord's resonant voice of the early and mid 1970s, his current style makes him sound, well, just plain old. Yet this CD survives in my collection because a) a majority of the tracks are great songs, with sensibly spare arrangements, and b) Lightfoot doesn't try to hide the fact that he's getting on in years. His best songs here seem refreshingly upbeat and candid about aging. And if he doesn't sing about getting the girl, he effects a strikingly hard-edged approach on bluesy rockers like "Boathouse," "My Little Love," and the superb "Uncle Toad Said." Listening repeatedly to this CD, especially to the above songs, I'm wondering if he's trying to use his aging pipes to produce a Dylanish tone -- his nasal voice cuts through the mix sometimes like the twang of a Telecaster. The fact that it's possible to detect shades of the old mid-to-low register on songs like "On Yonge Street" reinforces this thought. But if that oh-so-golden voice is a thing of the past, I think there's enough here for dedicated fans to find rewarding.

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