High Winds White Sky (Bonus Track Edition)

This is an album of luminous simplicity and quiet wisdom by an artist just beginning to realize his potential. Released in 1971, Bruce Cockburn’s second album helped establish him as one of Canada’s most promising singer/songwriters and attracted notice in the U.S. as well. Its virtues are understated but substantial — Cockburn’s always-fluent acoustic guitar work and self-revealing lyrics draw the listener in close. High Winds White Sky displays a wry humor (especially in “Happy Good Morning Blues”) and a feel for life’s everyday paradoxes. “Let Us Go Laughing” and “One Day I Walk” invoke rural Canadian landscapes, while the title tune and “Shining Mountain” have the contemplative tone of a Buddhist sutra. Love songs like “You Point to the Sky” and “Life’s Mistress” bring an almost medieval courtliness to their language and melodies. Cockburn’s singing is openhearted and pleasingly naïve. These tracks hint at the passionate spiritual and political explorations to come on later albums, but as it is, High Winds White Sky is a sweetly beguiling work.