BRUCE COCKBURN : HUMANS

1. Grim Travellers
2. Rumours of Glory
3. More Not More
4. You Get Bigger as You Go
5. What About the Bond
6. How I Spent My Fall Vacation
7. Guerrilla Betrayed
8. Tokyo
9. Fascist Architecture
10. The Rose Above the Sky

Label : True North

Released : 1980

Length : 43:20

Review (AllMusic) : Long regarded as Bruce Cockburn's finest moment on record, Humans, issued in 1980, is easily the most revealing of his tomes as well. This Rounder reissue is fully remastered and contains one bonus track, a live reading of the album's opener, "Grim Travellers." Cockburn's marriage had fallen apart, he'd moved from the country to a gritty inner-city section of Toronto called Cabbagetown, and he'd begun to explore in earnest the reggae rhythms that had underscored his hit single "Wondering Where the Lions Are" from Dancing in the Dragon's Jaws. The record of a restless travelogue that has become his stock in trade as a wandering observer, activist, and minstrel with deep wanderlust, Humans is the result of great turmoil and pain, and reveals Cockburn's musical, spiritual, and emotional worldview as all in flux. The record opens with the hard truth of global mercenaries in "Grim Travellers," a shimmering beauty of a song with a dubby bassline and jazzed-out Fender Rhodes piano. This is Cockburn's first issued song in his documentary style, complete with rich metaphorical images of horror and truth and the beauty on their nether sides. "Rumours of Glory" is straight-up reggae. It grooves and rocks steady, with a bubbling bassline punching up the front line. Lyrically the song offers a new kind of mystical attraction for Cockburn, one rooted in the crust of everyday life: "You see the extremes of what humans can be/In that distance/Some tensions are born/Energy surging, like a storm/You plunge your hand in/You draw it back, scorched/Beneath, it's shining like gold/But better...." A beautiful backing chorus that sounds like the I-Threes croons the tune to a close.