Blue Rodeo: Five Days In July (2LP) [WARNER]

Why you'll love it

This 30th anniversary 2LP set spreads the album over four sides. Five Days in July is the band's most successful record, six times platinum in Canada, and it gave Canadian radio "5 Days In May," "Hasn't Hit Me Yet" and "Bad Timing."

This edition

• 2LP set
• 30th anniversary edition

About the album

Some of the best records start life as a warm-up. In July 1993 Blue Rodeo set up on Greg Keelor's farm in Southern Ontario to cut demos for their next album, and the tapes had such an easy, unhurried glow that the band decided they were the album. It came out on WEA that October, the group's first record for the label, and the first with keyboardist James Gray.

The sound leans into the Harvest-era Neil Young that Jim Cuddy and Keelor loved, all porch harmonies, pedal steel and creaky mandolin. Sarah McLachlan drops in to sing on "What Is This Love," "Dark Angel" and the closing "Know Where You Go/Tell Me Your Dream," adding piano on two of them, while Anne Bourne's cello colours "English Bay" and Colin Linden adds guitar. Cuddy wrote "5 Days In May" after watching the band's sound engineer write his wife's name in the sand on a New Zealand beach, then folded in the story of how he met his own wife.

For the 30th anniversary the band played the whole album live across the country in two-set shows, which tells you how much it still means to the people in the seats. It remains the sound of a Canadian summer afternoon, minus the mosquitoes.

Also at Kops: more Blue Rodeo on vinyl · browse CDN Pop / Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On WEA / Warner (cat# 1-143146), a reissue of the 1993 album.