★★★★★
You've gotta hand it to Dan Bern. The guy has stuck to his guns on a lot of things, including writing unembellished folk songs that range in subject matter from reckless sex in a post-AIDS world to metaphorical tornados to the size of Tiger Woods', um, golf balls. And it's turned out in various ways: sometimes excellent (1998's Fifty Eggs), often unexpectedly poignant ("God Said No") and frequently political ("Bush Must Be Defeated")...
- www.americansongwriter.com
2013-04-25
★★★★★
Everyone from R.E.M. to A Perfect Circle has been trying recently to sing Bush out of the White House. But credit to Dan Bern, who kept the tradition of protest song alive while it was deeply unfashionable...
- www.uncut.co.uk
2010-06-19
★★★★★
Once upon a time, Dan Bern -- folk singer, painter, sketch artist, baseball fan, lonely traveler -- made a terrific record. The year was 1993, and Bern was at the top of the folk festival and coffeehouse scene. His first full-length album, left untitled, milked the best that world had to offer (warmth, humor, ironic commentary) and laid something so original on top of it that even Bern himself could never again match its magic...
- www.nudeasthenews.com
2009-07-28
★★★★★
In 2001 Bern wrote an endlessly corny nine-minute 9/11 elegy that I liked that way. Then he mourned securities traders and lusted for revenge. Now the meanness of "Talkin' Al Kida Blues" is just as apt--in two lines the WTC is down, an atrocity that quickly pales against slavery and the Indians, and we're off to a John Ashcroft theme park as per Dylan-does-Woody...
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-17
★★★★★
No text for this review; see http://robertchristgau.com/xg/bk-cg90/grades-90s.php.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
No text for this review; see http://robertchristgau.com/xg/bk-cg90/grades-90s.php.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
Messiah one song and king of the world the next, this absurdist upstart isn't above flat-out imitating the young Dylan, although he'll settle for a more general resemblance. Whether he's strumming to beat the band, flattening guitar-bass-drums into deep background, joking around with throat singing, or stealing the spoken melody of "Brownsville Girl," his metier is folk music of the culturally retrograde antihoot variety...
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
weird dreams for justice ("God Said No," "Thanksgiving Day Parade")
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
A sort of male Ani DiFranco (who
produces here), Bern is an amphetamine folkie with a
provocateur's wit. Planning an orgy for ''the day they find a
cure for AIDS,'' paying vaguely incestuous tribute to his big
sister, or staring down the rift between black and white
culture, he's so over-the-top he usually lands right in your
backyard. His alien-meets-primate explanation of humanity in Fifty Eggs is
pretty catchy too. B+
- ew.com
2009-06-12
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