Something Beautiful by Great Big Sea (CD, Mar-2004, Zoe)

This is a uniquely different album for Canadian band Great Big Sea.

While it still contains a couple of trad songs, including the beautifully arranged and song John Barbour, which rises to a soaring finish, with beautiful whistle work, this is an album of mostly original songs, some of them stunningly beautiful, but always harmonic in true GBS fashion, and even more upbeat than is usual with this upbeat band.

The wonderful thing about GBS is, they are genuinely nice guys. They just radiate nice. The people that attend their concerts are nice. Even Glenn the "merchandise guy" with the perpetual birthday is....nice. You just want to pinch their cheeks (careful ladies....) and wish they were neighbors and that you could join their kitchen parties.

But, many of the songs on this CD reach a new level of niceness, without going overboard into sugary sacharin-y sweet.

Shines Right Through Me is an upbeat piece of joy, as is If I Were King.

But the heart wrencher is the hauntingly gorgeous and personal title song Something Beautiful. I know it sounds silly, but this song helped me through a tough time. I must have listened to it a hundred times, and it never got old, because it is so sincere, in both the words and melody themself and the performance.

I think of this song as part of a trilogy with the song Let it Go, which is a rich beauty of a song, too. The two songs go together wonderfully, one with the theme of loss, and the other advising you to let it go, it's a pebble in a gravel road.

Lucky Me is kind of the third one in the loose trilogy, a reminder that luck is where you find it, and to celebrate it when you do.

And it's wonderful to hear Bob get a feature song in the fun song, Helmethead. The multi-talented instrumental whiz of the group, he tends to stay happily in the background, which is a shame, but when you have two outgoing perfomers like Sean and Alan, well.....

Finally, the song Sally Ann.....listen to it once, and you'll think it's about a pretty girl in a pub. Now, listen again, knowing that it was written about the small daughter of friends, and it takes on that wide-eyed, glorious niceness that defines Great Big Sea.