How Can There Be Another Day?
offers an album full of B-sides, live tracks, and rarities recorded by
alternative country
singer
Gerald Collier
and a crack band in 1997-1998. There are truly some fun oddities here, as with
Collier
's long acoustic
country
version of
Leonard Cohen
's
"Is This What You Wanted?"
Despite bizarre lines like "You were KY Jelly/And I was Vaseline" ("Vaseline" rhyming with "
Steve McQueen
"),
manages to inject real feeling into the countrified choruses. There's a solid version of
Jagger
/
Richards
'
"Jigsaw Puzzle,"
though
and the band stick too close to the original tempo and arrangement. The same stumbling block enters the pathway on
Richard Thompson
"Night Comes In,"
inviting the listener to ask why a similar version of a great song was needed. The take on
John
Taupin
"Rocket Man"
works better, delivering a version of what the song might have sounded like had it been performed by
Crazy Horse
. About half the songs on
are
originals, including a fine take of
"Don't Discard Me"
and the acoustic
"For Taking My Baby Away."
For fans of
's 1997-1998 work, this unearthed material serves as the next best thing to a lost album. ~ Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr.