I'm Not Sayin' it's the Gordon Lightfoot listening thread (but it is)...new album every Thursday

First impressions...

this one starts well, then really loses the bit around the Foster song. Thank god for A Passing Ship & I'll Tag Along. I especially liked A Passing Ship on first listen.

A few more thoughts.

Even in the 80s how did Anything for Love get on the country charts? bananas.

Saying it starts well is maybe a bit much, its starts okay, Stay Loose is a silly song, kinda like Salute. Its not one I need to re-listen to but I don't hate it.

Morning Glory is like a lesser GL song from the 70s. The title track is passable.

Then from A Lesson in Love to You Just Gotta Be is horrific, the worst run of songs in his career. Sappy lyrics, over produced, voice is lacking. Sounds nothing like anything I want from GL.

Then I really love A Passing Ship, it's like a Gord power ballad. It might challenge In My Fashion for 80s GL songs.

I'll tag along is much like Morning Glory, a lesser 70s song, still nice to hear.

The country charts were bananas in the mid-80s. 51 different songs made it to #1 on the Billboard country chart in 1986 alone, a lot of them even more bland and MOR than Anything For Love (which only got to #71 anyway). Gord's biggest country hit was Sundown which made it to #13 in the summer of "74. His biggest hit as a writer was Marty Robbins's "Ribbon of Darkness", #1 in June 1965.

okay I think I will have to redownload this album since the Foster collab in fact appears to be "Nothing You Can Do About It" by the Manhattan Transfer. was really confused for a sec there.

but, judging by the other 9 songs...I think kreuzer is basically right, the middle section of this album is garbage. kinda reminds me of those late ELP albums where they were writing really bland adult contemporary ballads that wouldn't have worked even if his voice wasn't shot. it sounds like he's channeling Chris De Burgh on half of these tunes. I almost want to make vaporwave out of it.

"A Passing Ship" sorta falls into that too but I agree there's a much better actual tune there. idk if I really wanna hear it again.

"Morning Glory" was kinda nice

Back on our usual Thursday schedule...

Waiting For You - 1993

"Restless" – 3:36
"Ring Them Bells" – 2:56 (Bob Dylan)
"Fading Away" – 3:10
"Only Love Would Know" – 4:18
"Welcome to Try" – 4:03
"I'll Prove My Love" – 3:10
"Waiting for You" – 3:35
"Wild Strawberries" – 4:17
"I'd Rather Press On" – 3:43
"Drink Yer Glasses Empty" – 3:16

Curious to see what happens on this album vs. his 80s ones. Haynes & Clements are back on bass & lead after not doing East of Midnight. Also the credits list is stripped back down to his basic core group. Feels like its going to be a back to basics sort of album.

not sure im gonna be able to go on the rest of this ride with gordo. last couple albums doing absolutely nothing for me.

yeah I think Dream Street Rose was pretty good, better than Endless Wire but not as good as any of the ones before that

Shadows and Salute had moments but Gordo was just not made for the 80s

will be listening to this one in a bit (though uh...it is Wednesday isn't it?) - "Restless" was on the Greatest Hits disc I had and I remember liking that a lot, felt like the sort of tune that suited an aging Gordon Lightfoot well. kinda got me choked up, maybe just because it was the last song on the disc which implied it was basically the end of his career

haha, it sure is wednesday, i'm off friday and moved all my normal meetings earlier in the week by a day and i've apparently fallen into it completely.

yeah fair enough Spottie. I think as Gord's losing his voice it really makes these albums a slog. He's lost a lot of other skills sure but I really miss the voice most of all.

we're almost at the end (just two more after this) so I'll finish off with whoever wants to join for the last two just to be completest.

only two more ok i think i can do it, at least skip through the albums anyway. its been good tho ive discovered a ton.

this one is definitely better than the last 3, mostly because it avoids all the 80s trappings and gets back to folk songs. the tempos still feel too quick for this sort of music ("I'd Rather Press On") but with the richness in his voice gone I guess it doesn't really matter. the title track and "Restless" are nice.

While I was listening to this one on spotify Daylight Katy came on after Drink Yer Glasses Empty and it didn't feel out of place. Now I like Daylight Katy well enough but I think that kinda shows the value of this albums. I agree with you frogbs on the title track and Restless. I like Drink Yer Glasses Empty most I think though.

His voice really struggles though, Ring Them Bells and Welcome to Try especially stood out for me in that regard, but the song writing is a huge step up from his 80s albums for sure. I listened to this one a few times over and didn't skip a song. I don't think that's happened since Endless Wire or Dream Street Rose. I didn't realize how much I missed his creative lyrics. Even on I'll Prove My Love, I don't cringe while listening like I did on A Lesson In Love for example.

The tasteful production is nice of course.

I think I'll come back to this one more.

A Painter Passing Through

"Drifters" - 3:27
"My Little Love" - 4:08
"Ringneck Loon" - 4:14
"I Used to Be a Country Singer" (Steve McEown) - 3:16
"Boathouse" - 4:13
"Much to My Surprise" - 3:42
"A Painter Passing Through" - 3:55
"On Yonge Street" - 4:27
"Red Velvet" (Ian Tyson) - 2:37
"Uncle Toad Said" - 3:29

Second last one. I only Drifters off this one.

The lack of response here is telling. I thought this was known as his worst album, though RYM apparently thinks East of Midnight is worse. At this point his voice is just gone and I don't really feel anything from any of the tunes. He sounds okay when he doesn't have to sustain any notes but when he does you can really hear the age in his voice. There's clearly a lyrical theme of being past your prime on this album so I guess Gord was feeling it himself. I mean "Drifters" and "Painter" both come off as being auto-biographical and I feel like "Uncle Toad Said" is sorta poking fun of himself. Very much of a "life is winding down and I made lots of mistakes but have no regrets" sorta vibe here. I do like a few tunes here, particularly the Tyson cover and the title track, which I imagine might have sounded pretty nice if he wrote it 25 years before. The second half of this album is pleasant, there's more good stuff there than all of East of Midnight but that's not exactly a ringing endorsement.

Yeah this one is not doing much for me at all. Definitely a step down from Waiting For You. I think I'd take East of Midnight over it, just for A Passing Ship. This album has less horrible songs than East of Midnight though.

Ringneck Loon feels awkwardly delivered, Boathouse is really just boring.

I wouldn't turn off Much To My Suprise if it came on Adult Contemporary radio, probably the same for the title track. I kinda like On Yonge Street, but I'm sure thats just nostalgia from my own time living there. That's about all I can muster for this one.

Harmony - 2004

1."Harmony" – 3:11
2."River of Light" – 3:48
3."Flyin' Blind" – 2:49
4."No Mistake About It" – 4:03
5."End of All Time" – 3:41
6."Shellfish" – 3:45
7."The No Hotel" – 5:54
8."Inspiration Lady" – 3:08
9."Clouds of Loneliness" – 2:52
10."Couchiching" – 3:20
11."Sometimes I Wish" – 3:37

Last one!

looks like its just you and me now, bud.

Unlike all the other post-Endless Wire albums, I actually do know this one. It came out when I was really getting into Gord (though a greatest hits) and I figured I'd buy a copy out of respect (admittedly, I was pretty stunned when he actually started singing). As you might know he had some pretty severe heart issues around this time and there were rumors swirling around that he was on death's door. If I recall correctly a lot of the album was written & arranged from the hospital. As a result the critics were a lot easier on this one, although I think it really is one of his better post-70s efforts. The melodies here are actually pretty memorable, in fact I still remember how a lot of these go. The instrumentation is super mild but it sounds pretty good as a whole. I like the keyboard line on "No Hotel" a lot.

Granted his voice sorta ruins this thing, he sounds a lot like the various grandpa characters on the cartoons I used to watch as a kid. But a year removed from surgery you get a pass for that, especially if you saw the photos of him from that time, he looked like he weighed about 80 pounds (though to be fair I believe all the vocals outside of the live tracks were taken from pre-surgery demos). It's kind of hard to divorce the album from its context, particularly when it's got lines like "I won't be looking up old friends ever again" on it. A lot of these songs have a "ready to die" them to them which gives tunes like "End of All Time" & "Shellfish" a real emotional punch.

I'm surprised that this turned out to be his last album (unless he suddenly decides to make another one at the age of 80). Maybe they weren't selling or he just got sick of writing songs but he seems to be on more of a creative streak here than he was over, I dunno, the last two decades.

TS: Couchiching - Gordon Lightfoot vs. Ch Ching - Lady Sovereign

This one was a nice listen, nice to wrap up on something that's not terrible. I especially liked Inspiration Lady thru Sometimes I Wish.

His voice is really bad at this point, sounds like what I remember from him in concert, the drop from A Painter Passing Through is really noticeable but I agree that this is a stronger collection of songs. I think if I consider Salute the beginning of his real tailspin, this one and Waiting For You are his best two overall albums of his final 5. It is really an emotional listen though, I wonder sometimes if he doesn't write another album 'cause he already wrote what he thought was his last album and assumed he wasn't gonna make it out the other side of his illness at the time. Couchiching/Sometimes I Wish feel a lot like a final here's to my hometown and here's my final take on life sort of songs.

Thanks for joining frogbs, and everyone else, found or rediscovered a boatload (heh) of great songs. I'll post a bunch of my favourites and some comments on them in time, just trying to hit another writing deadline so trying not to split my focus right now. Would be cool to here the same from anyone else that wants to post their's.

Amazon has Gordon Lightfoot The Complete Albums 1970-1998 for download for $7.99 -- "Sit Down Young Stranger" through "A Painter Passing Through"

Robbie Fulks takes on Gordon Lightfoot's catalog and is crushingly OTM .

that piece is *fantastic*, thanks for sharing

Robbie Fulks may be my favourite music writer. His tour diaries and essays on his website are just such a pleasure to read and explain the vocation of being a songwriter/performer so succinctly .

Wow, I will read everything that guy writes, that was fantastic

yeah, that was so good I actually want to check out *his* music!

nothing to add, just echoing the other comments. that was a really great read.

great article indeed, i echo Simon's point that i definitely want to check out Robbie's music now. It was really interesting to read about Gord's tuning obsession and his detailed look at the mechanics of the music was really illuminating, my own understanding of music theory is small so this was really helpful in understanding the songs more deeply.

my only thing is on this point he makes...

“Sometimes I think it’s a shame, when I get feelin’ better when I’m feelin’ no pain.” Regret over feeling better, while a neat irony, isn’t a known emotion in the human repertoire.

'feelin' no pain' means getting drunk to everyone else right? Not sure if its just something i heard from the old guys at the bars in my small hometown. I can definitely understand that the line makes no sense if you don't know the euphemism.

that was always my assumption

a lot of times when I don't understand a particular line I just assume it's about drinking or groupies

wait did he just surprise drop a new album in the middle of coronavirus panic

Ok boomer moment?

"Return Into Dust" was on my Release Radar this week. Sounded good and spooky...I'll have to check out the rest.

I've read the Robbie Fulks article on Lightfoot a couple of times now. It's very well-written, contains a lot of insights and obviously was a lot of work, but I still take exception to how he characterizes Lightfoot's later work as an example of the perils of the artist in decline.
First, he's "debunking" a bunch of records that have been heard by nobody except the people on this thread and a subset of Lightfoot fans; his new albums stopped getting airplay even on Canadian MOR radio by the time of Salute. It's not like he's John Prine, whose voice and skills arguably suffered an even steeper decline, but continued to receive critical plaudits and ever-increasing sales. I mean, if Prine had written the verse that Fulks quotes from "Wild Strawberries", it would have been cited as an example of his warm, self-deprecating humour. It's true that Lightfoot is not Paul Simon in terms of striving for originality and innovation, but in 1986 they both made records that stretched the boundaries of their music in new ways, and at least East of Midnight doesn't have that horrible booming snare sound from Graceland.
I do feel sorry for Fulks, force-feeding himself these albums over the course of a month or two in order to write his article; Lightfoot is not really noted for the diversity of his songs, and cramming dozens of them in short order is certainly not the best method of appreciation (it's taken me more than thirty years to get around to them all). I would agree that the records post-Sundown and pre-sobriety (1975-1982) are a drop-off (despite some great songs), but Salute and the following albums are, to me, good examples of late-career work from an artist who does not necessarily want to push for innovation. David Bowie, for example, sweated and slaved over 1. Outside, but it doesn't even have as many good songs as Waiting for You, and Bowie's strain looks effortful compared to Lightfoot's ease and modesty (and I'm a Bowie fan). Lightfoot's voice has declined over the period (not as much as Elton John's, I'd say), and he certainly should not be doing shows like the one linked in the article, but I think he has adapted to his limitations on record and still conveys a lot of feeling and nuance.
I still haven't heard Solo, but will do in a week or two, and, since no-one else seems to be doing it, I'll be back to provide a conclusion to this thread (unless Gord releases a final, final album of originals in 2036) and hopefully won't be taking back all my effusions above.

I don't know enough about Lightfoot to make a comparison, but I disagree about Prine having a steep decline. I actually think he's a rare example of a songwriter who made it to old age without a really noticeable decline; his great songs came less often after the eighties but they continued to come. It's hard to say for sure, but I don't think that verse he quotes would have impressed me in a John Prine song. It feels forced, and Prine's humor has always felt very natural and unforced to me, like it's just a natural result of seeing the world at an odd angle most of the time.

OK, I was mostly trying to say that the latter-day Lightfoot records don't have any particular acclaim for Fulks to deflate. Lightfoot has put out seven albums in the last forty years, mostly unheard, so Fulks accusing him of "watering down his legacy" makes little sense (meanwhile, Neil Young has released about thirty over the same period, many of which are disliked even by his fans). Has anyone (other than, maybe, Robbie Fulks) had their enjoyment of "Sundown" ruined by "Ringneck Loon" or "Shellfish"?
I find Prine gets corny post-Common Sense, I find Lightfoot open and thoughtful by contrast. I know a lot of people would reverse those judgments.

hey somehow i missed the new album coming out last year!

I just listened to it last night for the first time and I don't know if I liked it as much as Harmony, it was strong in the Return Into Dust thru Just a Little Bit section especially I think. His voice is real thin at this point of course, which is a shame 'cause I felt like I couldn't always hear the lines he was delivering, but the quiet man & guitar production definitely was the right choice considering.

I think I liked it better than A Painter Passing Though, though I will admit I haven't gone back to that one at all since we listened to it in this thread so maybe i should give it a re-listen.

As to your point Halfway. I will admit I have hardly listened to John Prine (though much like Tom Waits I assume I will like him when I finally get around to it), but I agree that I don't think Gord's really hurt his legacy. Also, I will ride pretty hard for East of Midnight at this point, I still go back to it a lot since we listened to it on this thread, A Passing Ship is one of my favourite of Gord's songs now.

I didn't mean to turn this into a referendum on poor John Prine, just that he was, by contrast, an older artist whose acclaim and sales climbed even as his voice withered.

It was East of Midnight that inspired my revival of this thread, it was the last of the older Lightfoot records I hadn't heard. There was an interview where he suggested that it was an underrated album that he would like more people to listen to. "Anything for Love" is probably his worst, but there is some unusual stuff like "You Just Gotta Be", with syncopated drum machines and a bewildering array of chord changes. It also has his classic folk style on "Let It Ride" and "I'll Tag Along", and some of the AOR of Salute on the title track and "Ecstasy Made Easy".

Gord doesn't really have a high-profile commercial failure - Endless Wire is the one post-"Edmund Fitzgerald" album that a lot of people bought and apparently only listened to once or twice (you can find pristine copies of it everywhere for two bucks), the other ones you almost never see which suggests that no one really bought them. Unlike Bowie I don't think anyone really expected much out of him after the 70's, and obviously you know he's not going to start delving into industrial technopop or anything. Even the people I know who are really into him don't listen to those albums. If not for this thread I never would have either.

Did you got anything out of the later records, or do you feel they were justly ignored?

not much, if I never heard them again I wouldn't mind. but I thought Dream Street Rose was at least pretty fun and gladly paid $2.99 for it - it was actually the only time I've seen a post-Endless Wire LP in a shop. and "Restless" is a fitting, would-be beautiful swansong. it's just kind of hard to stomach his voice at a certain point - not because of how great it once was, but because his delivery is straight up bad sometimes. he flails around and hits bum notes and on the last few albums it's hard to even make out what he's singing.

I guess the other good thing about East of Midnight is it's the last record before his singing really does start to suffer.

fwiw Shadows, Salute and East of Midnight have all been on my mental "give this another shot" list, though they've been sitting there for a couple years now :/

"Shadows" the song is in my top 10, maybe top 5 Gord.

picked up a "very best of" comp for three bucks, since it has a bunch of early material I don't have on vinyl. very odd cover design, isn't it?

https://dalescollectibles.com/products/gordon-lightfoot-the-very-best-of-gordon-lightfoot

forgot how much of his first album was "sorry babe, big Gord's gotta fuck"

He hates "For Lovin' Me" now, associates it with the end of his first marriage. I like the way he undercuts it on Gord's Gold, by performing it as a medley with "Did She Mention My Name".

"Can't Depend on Love" has been on repeat a lot for me lately. his lyrics are easy to relate to because the specifics of the scenario have pretty much all been stripped out, but there's something in his delivery that gestures at some kind of meaning, and so even little nonsense filler phrases like "I'm right or wrong" seem to have some kind of import. In other words, he's an ideal artist for people who project their emotions and experiences onto the music they listen to (and I'm one of those people).

Love "Saturday Clothes", just scratching the surface with this guy.

Whew, glad it’s not a mortality revive.

It's got such a nice mood, discretely sad or something

its that autoharp

Whew, glad it’s not a mortality revive.

Gord's used to those kind of rumours; he heard a Toronto radio station announce that he had died while he was in the chair at the dentist. He called them up and went on the air to prove he wasn't.

It's partly about the lyrics because it sounds to me like someone who is admitting to being a little sad but there's much more disappointment and sadness than he's willing to admit. Maybe putting a brave face on.