Dart to the Heart | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | 1994 | |||
Studio | Bearsville Studios | |||
Genre | Folk rock | |||
Label | Columbia Records[1] | |||
Producer | T Bone Burnett | |||
Bruce Cockburn chronology | ||||
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Dart to the Heart is an album by the Canadian folk rock musician Bruce Cockburn, released in 1994.[2][3] Cockburn considered it to be primarily an album of love songs.[4]
The album peaked at No. 176 on the Billboard 200.[5] Its first single was "Listen for the Laugh", which was a hit on adult alternative airplay radio.[6][7] Cockburn supported the album by touring with Patty Larkin.[8]
The album was produced by T Bone Burnett and mixed by Glyn Johns.[9][10] It was recorded at Bearsville Studios, in New York, although it was Cockburn's original intention to record the "quieter" songs in Los Angeles with a different group of musicians.[11][12] Greg Leisz played pedal steel on Dart to the Heart.[13]
"Closer to the Light" is a tribute to the American musician Mark Heard, who died in 1992.[14] "Train in the Rain" is an instrumental.[15] "Scanning These Crowds" is about Louis Riel.[16]
Entertainment Weekly wrote that the album "veers from boisterous to a little too sleepy, and includes some beautifully pithy lyrics."[20] The Washington Post called the album Cockburn's best since World of Wonders, writing that it "is dominated by quiet love songs built around acoustic guitar and a refreshingly original take on pop music's most familiar subject."[6] The Los Angeles Times considered it "tenderly hopeful in heart and slightly feisty in folk-rock spirit."[22]
The Milwaukee Sentinel thought that "Cockburn has the intelligent folk rocker's respect for words and almost never writes a throwaway."[23] The Indianapolis Star noted that "Listen for the Laugh" "has a Lou Reed-esque driving beat with edgy, flat vocals."[21] The New York Times determined that the album's best songs "describe a domestic relationship as a precious, all-too-extingishable light in a dark, lonely world."[24] The Calgary Herald concluded that Cockburn "looks within but not without sharpening his sense of observation, his sense of searching for meaning in the presence, the passion of another."[18]
AllMusic called it "a convincing reminder of a gentler, more reflective Bruce Cockburn."[17] Salon deemed it a "great lyrical" album.[25]
No. | Title | Length |
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1. | "Listen for the Laugh" | |
2. | "All the Ways I Want You" | |
3. | "Bone in My Ear" | |
4. | "Burden of the Angel/Beast" | |
5. | "Scanning These Crowds" | |
6. | "Southland of the Heart" | |
7. | "Train in the Rain" | |
8. | "Someone I Used to Love" | |
9. | "Love Loves You Too" | |
10. | "Sunrise on the Mississippi" | |
11. | "Closer to the Light" | |
12. | "Tie Me at the Crossroads" |