Blood, Sweat & Tears
Live & Improvised (Floating World)
★★★

THE contents of this live two-CD set were recorded at four different North American shows over five nights in the summer of 1975. 

Blood, Sweat & Tears had been one of the driving forces behind the burgeoning jazz-rock movement during their early years with Al Kooper at the helm, but the influence of jazz was tending to dominate their live performances by the time that these shows were captured for posterity. 

Recently returned Canadian vocalist David Clayton-Thomas was in typically unsubtle form as the then incarnation of the band plundered their illustrious back catalogue to deliver their fairly loose treatments of old favourites such as And When I Die and Spinning Wheel, with guitarists George Wadenius, Steve Kahn and Mike Stern joining their ranks at different venues on different nights.

Tim Grimm
The Little In-Between, (Cavalier Recordings)
★★★★

THIS singer, actor, artist and all round Renaissance man has a rare facility for weaving memorable musical narratives which inveigle their way into your subsconscious and stubbornly refuse to let go. 

The Little In-Between is Tim’s latest addition to the impressive body of work which he first began to assemble 25 years or so ago, although his theatrical exploits did take  precedence over his music-making activities for quite some time in the 1990s. 

It’s a classic collection in the storytelling balladry tradition famously popularised by the likes of John Prine and Bob Dylan, and the poet laureate of a rapidly vanishing rural America has chosen to focus inwards on this occasion. 

The finished product is arguably his most reflective and emotionally charged offering to date, with New Boots and Twenty Years of Shadows capturing Grimm at his wistful best. 

Bruce Cockburn
O Sun O Moon (True North Records)
★★★★

A GREAT deal of water has flowed beneath the proverbial bridge since Bruce Cockburn made his first major impact on the music fraternity with Wondering Where The Lions Are. 

This intricately crafted ditty soared into the higher reaches of the US singles charts in June 1980, and although it didn’t herald a lengthy run of commercial success for the 13-time Juno Award-winner and Canadian Music Hall of fame inductee, he still remains one of the most thoughtful and socially aware singer-songwriters you could wish to hear more than four decades later. 

The stunning poetic imagery which has always been such a feature of Cockburn’s best work informs many of the finest moments here, with On A Roll, King of the Bolero and When The Spirit Walks in the Room emerging as the cream of this particular crop.