Bruce Cockburn - Dancing in the Dragon's Jaws
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CD Details
Artist: Bruce CockburnEdition: Music CD
Format: Extra tracks, Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2002-11-19
Music Label: Rounder / Umgd
Soundtracks:
- Creation Dream
- Hills of Morning
- Badlands Flashback
- Northern Lights
- After the Rain
- Wondering Where the Lions Are
- Incandescent Blue
- No Footprints
- Dawn Music (Bonus Track)
- Bye Bye Idi (Bonus Track)
Music reviews of Dancing in the Dragon's Jaws
Music Review: Beautiful Album is Among Cockburn's Best
Rating: 5 Stars
It's difficult to say which of Bruce Cockburn's albums is his best for several reasons. First, he's put out over 20 albums during his career (not counting live and compilation pieces). Second, he's spanned a lot of different sounds and styles over the decades. Lastly, none of his work is bad and much of it is great. That said, 1979's Dancing in the Dragon's Jaws ranks among his best records. Released when most of Cockburn's music was still centered around his acoustic guitar work (later records increasingly incorporate his similarly tasteful and skillful electric guitar playing), Dancing is a relaxed, beautiful, and joyous work. Several songs on the album have a world beat influence with vibes & various percussion embellishments fleshing out the organic mix acoustic guitar, bass, piano, and drums. Production suits the songs well with a mellow late 70's pop-rock vibe.
The opening song "Creation Dream" sets the thematic tone of the album with it's spiritual focus and typically poetic and diffuse description of said spiritual dream: "Centered on silence, counting on nothing/I saw you dancing on the sea/and everything was dark except for sparks the wind struck from your hair/sparks that turned to wings around you/angel voices mixed with seabird cries/fields of motion surging outward/questions that contain their own replies." It might be tempting to dismiss Cockburn's songs on Dancing in the Dragon's Jaws as self-indulgent or silly were it not for the warm conviction that underlies the songs and the tight and often-times catchy musical arrangements. This isn't prog-rock theatrics (think Yes, for example) but is more like the diary of a Christian mystic - which if you read interviews with Cockburn from the period when the album was made is probably a fairly accurate description.
There is not a weak track to be heard here, from the joyful "Creation Dream," "Northern Lights," and "Incandescent Blue" to the more tense and jazz-influenced "After the Rain." "Wondering Where the Lions Are" is Cockburn's best known song and it is indeed a classic, utterly hopeful and as catchy as any single out there. The original album closes with its most meditative song, the lovely "No Footprints." An apt summary of Cockburn's ethos on this wonderful album: "love the Lord, and in Him love me too/and in Him go your way and I'll be right there with you/leaving no footprints when we go, only where we've been a faint and fading glow." For this listener, "Dancing in the Dragon's Jaws" does just that, leaving behind a faint glow with every listen - a beautiful and powerful album not to be missed. [Note: This special edition of the album contains two extra tracks, both instrumentals. Neither particularly enhances the original set though "Bye Bye Idi" may be of interest to Cockburn fans as it points forward in sound to some of the artist's later instrumentals, particularly those from "Dart to the Heart."]
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