Ian Tyson - Yellowhead to Yellowstone and Other Love Stories Stony Plain SPCD 1339 Format: CD Released: 2009 by David J. Cantor davidc@soundstage.com Musical Performance Recording Quality Overall Enjoyment

Ian Tyson’s latest modern-cowboy-oriented CD opens with cantering drums, bass, piano, and acoustic guitar -- "galloping" would sound too frantic, but they do haul ass. Electric steel guitar glides and occasionally swoops, evoking the album’s wide-open landscapes -- the mountains of the American/Canadian Northwest. There are some very catchy tunes here. And Tyson (long ago of Ian & Sylvia), whose "Four Strong Winds," "Someday Soon," and "Navajo Rug" are classics and who’s been honored by the Cowboy Poetry Gathering, doesn’t disappoint in the lyrics department.

"Far away I hear the others callin’ / The voice I hear in answer is my own / The first of winter snows will soon be fallin’ / And I’m a long, long way from the Yellowhead / Here in Yellowstone" -- the opener’s refrain. From the point of view of a wolf in a pack transferred from Canada’s Yellowhead Pass to America’s Yellowstone National Park. A shattering tour de empathie that avoids ever-tempting maudlin sentimentality and is up to date in its understanding of nonhuman animals. Co-written with Stewart McDougall.

Tyson wrote eight of the ten tracks, and there’s a sameness to the songs’ sound. But why not? This is an artist who long ago found his voice and knows it well. Tyson’s singing voice today differs from its former smoother, deeper quality due to an excessive strain event followed by a virus. The art of singing is his second nature, though, or maybe his first -- he delivers his well-crafted songs compellingly.

It is important to hear this and Tyson’s half-century of work. His influence is greater than is widely known.

GO BACK TO:

• Current Month's Music Reviews
• Archived Music Reviews