Bruce Cockburn: The Charity Of Night

In his 27-year recording career, Canadian singer/songwriter Bruce Cockburn has made music that's often either achingly beautiful or painfully pretentious. He's recorded an astonishing 23 albums: Some have been good, some have been middling, and 1993's terrific Christmas still stands as one of the finest contemporary holiday albums in existence. His new The Charity of Night is appropriately diverse, with songs ranging from fragile and memorably pretty ("Pacing the Cage") to oppressively melodramatic ("Get Up Jonah," "Birmingham Shadows") to lite-jazzy (the instrumental "Mistress of Storms") to subtly spaced-out (the almost Pink Floydian "Live On My Mind") to consciously commercial (the single "Night Train"). With 11 songs drawn out to a 67-minute running time, The Charity of Night certainly takes its time doing what it does; fortunately, Cockburn hits more often than he misses. And for every moment when he tries to perpetrate a flat poetry reading, there are many more when he hits on a decidedly compelling song.