Blue Rodeo – Small Miracles

Greg Keelor and Jim Cuddy, the Lennon & McCartney of Canadian roots-rock, have been writing and performing together for 25 years. While there’s nothing to indicate that Small Miracles represents the end of the road, it does feel like it was written from a vantage point where that end is visible. References to mortality and finality sprout in song after song, and most everything feels bathed in twilight.

“I don’t have all the time in the world,” they sing on the album-opening “So Far Away”, and the title track, tellingly, is set late in the evening. Keelor, whose songs tend to be edgier and more sprawling that Cuddy’s, laments a bruised-beyond-repair relationship that has reached the goodbye point in “It Makes Me Wonder”. “C’mon,” which captures the sextet at their catchy-rock best, tells of days that are gone forever. Even Cuddy’s brightly lit pop songs, “Summer Girls” and the crescendo marvel “This Town”, have the sting of leaving lurking. And “3 Hours Away”, a gentle country rocker that’s reprised as the more atmospheric “Where I Was Before” to close the album, nails the overall mood: “Some things aren’t meant to last/Like a day that burns up fast/Turn away and then it’s gone.”

Blue Rodeo’s trademark sound, a multi-national combination of Beatles, Band, and Byrds with the occasional honky-tonk detour, is in excellent form. Even if the end of the road appears to be on the minds of Keelor and Cuddy, their music still sounds like it could go on forever.