Riverside - 1990
15.2.1990
Review
"I was brought up near the riverside/In a quiet Irish town/An eighteen-month-old baby/The night they laid my Daddy down.... My home was filled with sorrow then, too much for me to tell," sings Luka Bloom on "The Man Is Alive," a sharp lament gracing his soaring major-label debut album, Riverside. Swirling toward a wisdom that sees all dead fathers as living in their children, the song echoes James Joyce's elegiac short story The Dead in its passionate acceptance and in its tight-lipped euphoria nearly too strong for words.
The Joycean note isn't casual or contrived. Bloom took his name from the long-suffering Leopold Bloom, the hero of Joyce's Ulysses, and he's also the inheritor of a particularly Irish mix of mysticism and moonshine, a carousing spirituality that marks musicians as distinct as Van Morrison and U2.
Bloom's first name, Luka, from Suzanne Vega's song about domestic brutality, targets the folk vanguard (Vega, Tracy Chapman, Michelle Shocked) of which he aims to be a part. The singer and acoustic guitarist a brother of the Irish folksinger Christy Moore arrived in the United States two years ago, gathered a reputation for his electrifying live shows, sang backup on the Indigo Girls' "Closer to Fine" and honed his own brand of contemporary Celtic soul.
As much Leonard Cohen as Woody Guthrie, however, Bloom is a decidedly artful musician. A literary lyricist "Nighthawks swagger in front of me/Sirens punctuate your symphony" he draws his material less from the overt politics and proletarian grit of much traditional folk than from states of lovers' ecstasy and private revelation. "Gone to Pablo" captures his narrative gift most subtly; commemorating the love suicide of Picasso's second wife, the song paints death sadly but elegantly, with an almost pre-Raphaelite beauty.
Backed mainly by smoky, minimal percussion and his own deft guitar, Bloom's singing is distinctive for its clarity and conviction. Not one of folk's eccentric voices, he's a more tender deliverer; a touch of rough brogue coarsens and personalizes his bell-like style. It's a voice sutied to love songs, and fittingly, the best works on Riverside are ballads. On "This Is for Life," a tale of lovers separated by English prison bars, Bloom outright keens the chorus, his longing achieving a haunting, erotic strain.
There are shortcomings to Riverside. Some of the blarney humor of "An Irishman in Chinatown" is coy; the lyrics of "The One" verge on both the portentous and the trite. But Bloom's failings are lapses of an overheated ambition, and, in these days of lazy radio formula, trying too hard is a forgivable offense.
Celebrating warm flesh and spiritual fire, Riverside is a dazzling entrance. Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, Jesse Winchester's first album and Robbie Robertson's glorious ballads delimit the ground Bloom examines. It's a brave territory one Bloom has proven himself able and worthy to travel. (RS 573)
Celebrating warm flesh and spiritual fire, 'Riverside' is a dazzling entrance. Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, Jesse Winchester's first album and Robbie Robertson's glorious ballads delimit the ground Bloom examines. It's a brave territory - one Bloom has proven himself able and worthy to travel.
Paul Evans, Rolling Stone Magazine
**** Stars
Sleeve Notes
The album was recorded at R.P.M. in New York. We added some music in S.T.S. in Dublin, Ireland, where Sean Devitt engineered. And a little more at Track Record in L.A,, with Ronnie S. Champagne. The album was mixed at Ocean Way in Los Angeles, and finally mastered at The Mastering Lab in L.A.
Artwork is by Kim Champagne. David Seltzer took the photographs. Diana sent her love from Ireland, the album returns it. My managers, God bless them, are Tom Prendergast and Glenn Morrow of Tomorrow Management, 1 Newark Street, Suite 9, Hoboken, N.J. 07030 (a special thanks to Marjorie Galen). My agent is Frank Riley and Triad Artists somewhere in Los Angeles. Ina Meibach is my lawyer, so don't give me a hard time! James O'Malley sorted out the Embassy and Michael Hill introduced me to the Warner Brothers and Sisters. So, there you have it.
With love from Luka Bloom.
Riverside Tracklist
1. Delirious
2. Dreams In America
3. Over The Moon
4. Gone To Pablo
5. The Man Is Alive
6. An Irishman In Chinatown
7. Rescue Mission
8. The One
9. Hudson Lady
10. This Is For Life
11. You Couldn't Have Come...
12. The Hill Of Allen Instrumental
