{"id":40796,"date":"2008-03-19T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-19T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/river-of-souls\/"},"modified":"2008-03-19T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-03-19T00:00:00","slug":"river-of-souls","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/river-of-souls\/","title":{"rendered":"River Of Souls"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nineteen ninety-three found Dan Fogelberg at an interesting place in his career. After arguably his worst CD, 1987\u2019s Exiles<\/i>, he had returned with a strong effort in 1990, The Wild Places<\/i>, and had found renewed energy in making his music be about things he really cared about; the environment, peace, and other political and social causes. Those influences continued and really jelled in his 1993 release, River Of Souls<\/i> — which in my opinion is the best album of his later career.<\/p>\n

On River<\/i><\/st1:placetype> Of <\/i>Souls<\/i><\/st1:placename><\/st1:place>, Fogelberg is telling stories. From \u201cMagic Every Moment\u201d to \u201cFaces Of America,\u201d it\u2019s about people that he\u2019s seen, things that he\u2019s encountered, and he paints strong, easily seen pictures with his songs. Musically, he was experimenting, branching out; he dabbles in Caribbean and African sounds as well as his more traditional ballads.\u00a0 The sound is organic, evolving, and powerful, with real conviction in the music, and is shorn of the occasional arranging and overdubbing excesses that Fogelberg was occasionally prone to. It\u2019s simple, and it works.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s not a bad track on River<\/i><\/st1:placetype> Of <\/i>Souls<\/i><\/st1:placename><\/st1:place>.<\/i> There are a couple of traditional Fogelberg ballads, and one of them — \u201cA Love Like This\u201d — is one of the loveliest things Dan ever wrote. \u201cHoly Road\u201d and \u201cSerengeti Moon\u201d have strong spiritual and rhythmic elements that echo \u201cThe Wild Places\u201d. \u201cThe Minstrel,\u201d a paean to Fogelberg\u2019s love of the sea and his boat, is magnificent and hypnotic.\u00a0 If you tied me down and forced me to name a favorite track, however, it would have to be the title track. \u201cRiver Of Souls\u201d is a haunting, mystical, and flamenco-accented story about walking to the Otherworld and seeing what you find there, a shamanic journey set to music, and it\u2019s absolutely breathtaking. And the anthemic close of the CD, \u201cA Voice For Peace,\u201d is one man\u2019s defiant insistence that there is another way besides mindless violence.<\/p>\n

The saddest part of Fogelberg\u2019s death is that there will be no more music like River<\/i><\/st1:placetype> Of <\/i>Souls<\/i><\/st1:placename><\/st1:place>. <\/i>Passionate, powerful, moving, thought-provoking, and a damned enjoyable listen, this is easily one of Fogelberg\u2019s best albums.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":29254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6036],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-40796","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-dan-fogelberg","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40796"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}