Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

With last year’s Caribbean crossover album Killer on the Rampage, Guyana-born Eddy Grant proved he could create a successful solo album by working alone in his Barbados studio. Grant wrote, arranged and produced every song on that album, including the gritty hit single “Electric Avenue,” and played all the instruments as well. But his follow-up album, Going for Broke, suggests that he is now suffering from artistic isolation. The circus-style reggae of “Only Heaven Knows” and the somnolent ballad “Blue Wave” reveal senseless content and inexcusably sloppy technique, while an irritating, indulgent guitar solo mars the vigorously rocking “Romancing the Stone,” which he wrote for the recent fil...

CANO, the Franco-Ontarian group from Sudbury, has changed the focus of its music and language—from folk to rock and French to English—so many times that even the group’s closest fans have become bewildered. Now, CANO has issued an all-French album, Visible, but the chaos has taken its toll, and the quality of the material is uneven. “Pauline” begins as a touching ballad about two lovers separated by war, but a cheerily sung chorus soon shatters the tragic mood. The title song offers more mood shifts than most complete albums, but the track’s inventiveness strays. Still, in “Fond d’une bouteille (Bottom of the Bottle)” an alcoholic’s desperation provides some dramatic imagery, and “J’ai bien ...

A mystical master of Gaelic rhythm and blues, Van Morrison has for more than 20 years served up musical puzzles to which he has offered no answers. But on A Sense of Wonder, his first album since Warner Brothers, his long-time label, reportedly dropped him, the Irish-born singer has stopped asking questions altogether. The result is lacklustre music with none of Morrison’s usual gut-wrenching soul. On the title track, Morrison contemplates nature’s beauty; with “Ancient of Days” and “The Master’s Eyes” he thanks the Creator for His generous ways; on the dirge-like “Let the Slave” he delivers the 18th-century visionary poet William Blake’s “The Price of Experience” in rapid monotone. Only on ...