Album Review: Gord Bamford, Diamonds In A Whiskey Glass

It would be easy to whinge about country superstar Gord Bamford for… oh, I dunno, take your pick: his seemingly effortless but roaring success, his philanthropy, the obvious craftsmanship of his music despite its strangely everyman vibe. Really, he’s like the teacher’s pet if the teacher was God. 

But then you hear something like “Heaven on Dirt,” a contemplative, sort-of ballad from Bamford’s blinding good 10th album, Diamonds In A Whiskey Glass, humbly celebrating the little things in life with such evident joy that you just want to crawl through the speakers and join Bamford beneath the tin roof there on that porch. 

That’s the thing about the songs on Diamonds: their accessibility makes them seem simple, yet they worm profoundly into the brain and the heart, conjuring deeper meaning in the process. To wit: “Marry Me Again” which, as you might surmise, is a tender ode to a wife many years down the line. Corny, sure, but also, a frank accounting of the rewards of real commitment. 

Conceptually similar is “Fishin’” which finds our man on the lake with his nine-year-old daughter who asks, “Dad, why do they call it fishin’ and not catchin’?” In addition to being the antithesis of Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle,” the song blossoms into a metaphor for life itself. 

Looser-limbed moments also abound. The frisky, fiddle-goosed honky-tonk “Hag on the Jukebox” is a shameless redneck anthem, hoisting the tumbler to Waylon, Willie, George, and Merle with the irresistible, “I like my whiskey on the rocks and Hag on the jukebox.” It’s bookended by the nimble “Tractor Town” containing lyrical quilts, cornfields and, presumably, the saloon in the before-mentioned track.

Then there’s “Beer Cloud,” documenting a bunch of labourers on a hot day wishing for — wait for it! — an actual, mofo-ing cloud made of suds to bust through the blue sky and drench them. Who thinks up stuff like this? It’s pleasingly weird and the perfect silly send-off for an album that deftly touches just about every emotional base you can name. Dang you, Bamford, y’all did it again.

Diamonds In A Whiskey Glass is released June 4, 2021 on Anthem Records.
Listen to it here.