Home Read Classic Album Review: Blue Rodeo | Greatest Hits

Classic Album Review: Blue Rodeo | Greatest Hits

The CanCon country-rock mainstays chronicle their journey with a retrospective.

This came out in 2001 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):

 


Blue Rodeo are so ubiquitous in Canada that a Greatest Hits CD almost seems superfluous — is there anybody who hasn’t heard Diamond Mine enough times yet?

Still, for those with a few gaps in their Rodeo discography, this 14-cut retrospective does a fair job of chronicling their journey from scrappy young janglemeisters (Rose-Coloured Glasses and Try from 1987’s Outskirts) to CanCon country-rock vets (It Could Happen to You, from ’97’s Tremolo), paying special attention to their revered 1993 disc Five Days in May (represented by the title cut, Hasn’t Hit Me Yet, Bad Timing and Dark Angel). For our money, though, the real appeal comes not from where they’ve been but where they’re headed. Two new tracks — a Burritos-style cover of The Bee Gees To Love Somebody and the piano-driven ballad After the Rain — find the Blue brothers augmenting their guitar-based style with soulful horns and strings whose rich textures make for a pretty swell new sound.

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