Bruce Cockburn's eleventh album is a quirky, passionate account of this Canadian Christian mystic's struggle to reconcile his rage about a bad relationship with the intense spirituality that's long been the focal point of his writing. Humans' tone ranges from Blood on the Tracks-style rancor ("You Get Bigger as You Go," "Fascist Architecture") to formal, T.S. Eliot-like religious confession ("The Rose above the Sky"). Indeed, Cockburn's juxtaposition of lofty insights and a scorned lover's bile gives the new record an emotional immediacy that his earlier LPs lacked. "I see the beauty – makes me cry inside," the singer announces in "Grim Travellers," a tune that equates personal bitterness with political terrorism.

Musically, Humans is similar to last year's Dancing in the Dragon's Jaws, from which sprang Cockburn's first American smash, "Wondering Where the Lions Are." "What about the Bond" and "Rumours of Glory," a buoyant hymn inspired by a Canadian sunset, echo the catchy pop-reggae of the 1979 hit and are particularly engaging. Though the album's style of synthesized folk-rock isn't conducive to the jazzy acoustic guitar playing that's earned Cockburn a reputation as an instrumental virtuoso, it nevertheless complements his singing, which, with its bold leaps from plaintive lyricism to punchy speech-song, is similar to Neil Young's.

While nothing here quite matches the awesome stillness of "In the Falling Dark," the artist's ultimate meditation on cosmic unity in the face of worldly dissolution, Humans is probably the perfect introduction to Bruce Cockburn's music. At its best, it's feverishly lovely. (RS 331)

STEPHEN HOLDEN