Jimmy Rankin - Harvest Highway [CD]

On Harvest Highway, Jimmy Rankin hits the road again, time traveling and traversing far-flung destinations along with his native Nova Scotia, of course through his singular brand of East Coast folk-rock. The Cape Breton icon's eighth solo album is rich in the narrative songwriting traditions that Rankin has been honing for nearly his whole life, filled with crackling yarns and poignant chronicles about feverish marriages in Thunder Bay, unmoored Newfoundlanders, lovers on the run, and fallen soldiers in France. Bookended by songs about home, the collection roams a trajectory not so different from Rankin's life, with narrators who relish in adventure while also feeling a yearning for the homeland from which they first pulled up their roots. Harvest Highway, finds Rankin at the height of his songwriting powers. "I've been working toward this album for my entire career," he says. And what a long and storied career it's been... In 2013, CBC listeners voted Rankin's 1994 JUNO Award-winning