REVIEW : The Ballad of Boogie Christ - Montreal Gazette

Joseph Arthur has spent stretches of his career in solitary confinement, and isn’t one to keep his ambitions on a tight leash, so a tripped-out collection of heavy soul featuring an extended cast could have been gleefully indulgent. Instead, Arthur has rarely been more focused. The psychedelia is for disciplined colour, not for splatter-painting, and the guests – including Garth Hudson, Jim Keltner, Ben Harper and more than a dozen others – are here for tasteful depth, not for stunt casting or excess for excess’s sake. 

The welcome shock of the new – notably a staggering soul-revue holler in Currency of Love – is balanced by the warm familiarity of some long-standing staples from the live show. Famous Friends Along the Coast and All the Old Heroes’ floods of transcendent imagery are at home on Arthur’s most lyrically provocative album, while a new take on the beat-poetry centrepiece I Miss the Zoo – a nocturnal soliloquy on last year’s one-man tour de force Redemption City, a sentimental triumph here – is a reminder that Arthur is rarely content to stay in one place for long. Let’s enjoy his Technicolor phase while it lasts.

Podworthy: Famous Friends Along the Coast

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Source