Search - Gordon Lightfoot :: Salute

Perhaps Gordon's most underrated album

Eric J. Anderson | Ankeny, Iowa | 10/05/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Maybe there are one or two weak numbers here, but I've always felt there were several indispensable classics on this album. "Tatoo" especially. Perhaps some folks don't like the glitzy pop/rock production given to many of the tunes. Personally, I like well-produced, multilayered pop music like Al Stewart's hit records, and this Lightfoot record, along with Gord's East of Midnight album that followed it, certainly fit in that mold. Hopefully the style of the music will not prejudice people and deter them from experiencing the poetry, melody and skillful delivery that Gordon creates and serves up on Salute. They say Gordon has had drinking problems. Endless Wire sounded to me like he was on the sauce and his pitch seemed always just a little off on that record. (Is it just me?) None of that here. Gordon sounds alert, engaged, and in top singing form. I especially love the sound of this record too. The albums recorded at Eastern Sound in Toronto seem to have an inherent clarity to them. (Bruce Cockburn made a couple of excellent sounding records there as well: Further Adventures Of and Joy Will Find a Way.) The old Salute LP record was mastered by Doug Sax at the Mastering Lab which brought out the maximum detail and liquidity that analog is capable of. I have a good vinyl LP copy, so I haven't exactly been pining away for a CD release, but it is very nice to have this available in a remastered edition. I trust Rhino -- I've never heard a bad Rhino remastering. It sounds to me as if a great deal of care was taken in the writing, recording, and producing of this album. What can I say? I put this forward as an example of high quality music-making."

PATIENCE REWARDED

Remaster Bob | Hong Kong, China SAR Hong Kong | 08/26/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"As a non-folkie, what is it that I like so much about Gordon Lightfoot? - the style of doomed romance underpined with obvious masculinity? (seasoned with an occasional dogged moment of hope?), - the wistful appreciation of nature? - or that smooth, pure, and steady voice (a friend describes on first hearing as "so full of sorrow")? Since the switch to CD's from vinyl eleven years ago, I have waited and watched for this personal favourite to be released and I am grateful to those who have finally put this on the shelves. Impossible to be objective, of course, once an album has settled so deeply into your subconscious as Salute has since it's summer release back in 1983. But for me this is an astonishingly under-rated collection from the great Canadian's life of music (witness the disappointing if tantalising inclusion of only three tracks on the Songbook box set, and even then they missed the best!). From the gritted-teeth exuberance of 'Salute' (- a lot more livin' to do indeed, still the case) to an all-time classic lost-love song - 'Tattoo' - what a gem. "You know time doesn't wait for nobody to find what they're after, it just keeps on rolling on down the deep canyons and through the green meadows into the broad ocean"... and still it doesn't wait. Perhaps the cause of this album's obscurity is the electronic characteristics of the production, the sheen of synthesisers and gliding electric guitar solos weaving all over the place, more of a 'rock-lite' than a folk sound, but never does Lightfoot compromise either his perfectionism or his melody. A no-brainer for Lightfoot fans, and maybe a great place to start if you're coming from rock and thinking of checking out more mellow sounds. The waiting is over! Salute!!"

Probably Lightfoot's most underrated album...

Steven A. Hustad | Eden Prairie, MN United States | 06/30/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I'd just gotten back into Gordon Lightfoot's music over the winter & spring of 2002/3, and was looking to update my old LP collection with CD replacements for some old favorites, and to add some newer releases I'd missed. I'd been a Lightfoot fan for a long time, but had never heard the album Salute until this year. What a great collection of songs! More electric than most of his other work, but very much the same superb sense of melody (especially on Romance and my favorite - Biscuit City).This album has rapidly become my favorite of his, and I never would have expected that after the great work on Don Quixote and Sundown. Nobody has the melodic songwriting talent of Lightfoot in my opinion."