Track Listing
1. Temple
2. Calling All Angels - (with K.D. Lang)
3. Love Is Everything
4. Sail Across the Water
5. All the Candles in the World
6. Sweet Incarnadine
7. Gospel According to Darkness, The
8. Angel Stepped Down, An (And Slowly Looked Around)
9. Vigil, The (The Sea)
10. Bells
11. At the Beginning of Time
12. Love Is Everything - (harmony version)
| Details | | Playing Time: | 67 min. | | Contributing Artists: | Brian Eno, Holly Cole, Jamie West-Oram, K.D. Lang, Michael Brook | | Distributor: | WEA (Distributor) | | Recording Type: | Studio | | Recording Mode: | Stereo | | SPAR Code: | n/a |
Album Notes
Personnel: Jane Siberry (vocals, keyboards, guitar); K.D. Lang (vocals); Ken Myhr (guitar, percussion, background vocals); Michael Brook, Jamie West-Oram (guitar); Ben Mink (viola); Anne Bourne (cello); Brian Eno (keyboards, guitar); Bryant Didier, Robert Ahwai, John Switzer (bass); Glenn Milchem, James Pinker (drums); Michael Phillip-Wojewoda (percussion, background vocals); Sid Wells, Graham Dickson (programming); David Ramsden, Holly Cole, Rebecca Jenkins, Rebecca Campbell, Paul Douglas, Andy Stochansky (background vocals).
Producers: Brian Eno, Michael Brook, Jane Siberry.
Engineers: Michael Phillip-Wojewoda, Peter Mettler.
Recorded at Mushroom Studios, Vancouver, Canada in Summer 1991; Reaction Studios, Toronto, Canada in Autumn 1991 and January 1993; Erdyl's Studio Backstage, Switzerland in February 1991; Westside Studios, London, England in Summer 1992.
Jane Siberry's last album during a five-year critically-applauded but commercially-negligible tenure with Reprise Records, 1993's WHEN I WAS A BOY trades the optimistic loveliness of albums like THE WALKING and BOUND BY THE BEAUTY for a darker, occasionally bleak meditation on love and loss. Inspired by the recent death of her father, Siberry has constructed a song cycle with little of the exhibitionistic mawkishness of, say, Sinead O'Connor's I DO NOT WANT WHAT I HAVEN'T GOT.
Instead, Siberry's lyrics are more general and poetic, which makes their emotional heft that much greater. The heartbreaking "The Vigil (The Sea)" and the cathartic and uplifting "Love Is Everything"--here in two versions--are as powerful and musically breathtaking as any pop music dealing with the subject of death.
Editorial Reviews
Ranked #25 in the Village Voice's 1993 Pazz & Jop Critics Poll.
Village Voice (03/01/1994)
4 Stars - Excellent - ...WHEN I WAS A BOY is funereal and expansive....Nothing Siberry has done in the past prepares the listener for this album's spooky obsession, bewilderment and resignation....Siberry approaches her task with fearless simplicity...
Rolling Stone (11/25/1993)
...at its most harrowing, [WHEN I WAS A BOY] surpasses even the intensity of Lou Reed's LOVE AND LOSS....Not an easy listen, but surely a rewarding one...
Musician (10/01/1993)
4 Stars - Excellent - ...this is an album crammed with neat, if hardly light-hearted, moments, which improve with every listen...
Q (08/01/1993)
...WHEN I WAS A BOY [is] subtly powerful...[Jane] Siberry mingles the gooey and the sinister...
Melody Maker (07/31/1993)
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