By Mike Usinger

http://www.nodepression.com/articles.aspx?id=4921


Technically speaking, Vancouver's Rodney DeCroo is a solo artist, but the strength of Mockingbird Bible is the team he's assembled around him. Apart from Be Good Tanyas chanteuse Samantha Parton, most of his backing players aren’t exactly household names in America or, for that matter, in most of their native Canada.

On the Great White North’s west coast though, the likes of multi-instrumentalist Jon Wood and pianist Ida Nilsen are considered legitimate heavyweights, and Mockingbird Bible shows why. Thanks to their efforts – not to mention those of violinist Meredith Bates, guitarist Chris Young, and upright bassist Mark Haney – what might have easily been just another singer-songwriter outing is an often transcendant work of art. Check out the harvest-moon harmonica and star-swept lap steel on "Memories Of Snow And Dust", or the back-porch banjo and ghostly accordion that haunt "St. Augustine".

If DeCroo has a top-notch supporting cast on the Wood-produced Mockingbird Bible, he also has the songs. The 41-year-old has the kind of whiskey-scorched voice that suggests he's spent a night or two raising hell at the local tavern, but the thirteen tracks here are strictly for those 4 a.m. comedowns when the city outside is asleep and the candles are about to burn down to nothing. Those who remember when Bobby Zimmerman sang instead of slurred will love the way the battle-scarred agit-folk of "Sacred Ground" updates Dylan for the D.I.Y. nation.

From there, DeCroo proves equally accomplished at abandoned-shack blues ("Mockingbird"), dying-campfire country ("Spinning Wheel"), and skeletal Americana ("Lies Are Just Lies"). His greatest moment on a great, winningly understated record is "Gasoline"; with Wood's muted banjo and piano coloring things in all the right places, he wonders, "Is that rain comin' down/Is that gasoline?" Even before DeCroo suggests firing up a match for the answer, you'll be moved.