It seems appropriate that at a time when Canada is coming under financial and verbal attacks from the Trump administration, Canadian Bryan Adams returns to the metaphorical ramparts to create a collection of songs that pay homage to the place where he grew up and still sometimes calls home. It began simply enough, writing a song for the documentary Canada’s Wild Eastern Edge, but by Adams’s own admission, he suddenly found himself writing more songs about Canada that took him “somewhere a little different, which made the whole thing exciting”.
It’s certainly a sudden left that feels right, but having a subject matter close to his heart has made for one of Adams’ best and most inspired albums in years.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the polished pop-rock veneer of his last few records – very few people do radio rock like the ageless Adams. But this record, a mix of roots, folk and rock, proves that he can write in almost any form (we await his unlikely jazz fusion double album with bated breath), and it’s in the writing of songs for home that has ignited something in Adams that resonates beyond mere boundaries or borderlines.
That said, he can still spin the most sublime of power ballads, although on How’s It Goin’ he isn’t writing about the archetypal cars and girls, instead choosing to sing, in Handful Of Gold, about the Klondike gold rush in northwest Canada in the late 1800s, and the frozen and cruel fate of thousands of the would-be miners who headed there in the hope of striking it rich.
Similarly, the tragedy of the Second Narrows Bridge collapse that caused the death of 19 men and remains the worst industrial disaster in Vancouver’s history is picked over for the elegiac-sounding The Bridge. They might sound like odd starting points, but Adams builds them into something magical and artful.
The resounding thrum of Iron Ribbon – which sounds like Adams doing his best Pete Seeger – takes its cue from heavy industry and the formation of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Which sounds like the driest puddle of inspiration, but with the backing of Bryan and his band, it thunders along merrily. And the punchy 51st State is an edgy riposte to the would-be critics of the Canadian way of living; all are welcome, but maybe just watch your step.
(LouderSound)
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