Local artist Del Barber’s long-awaited album Where the City Ends has been worth the wait. It’s an album with cool folk songs that touch on ideas, events and emotions that most people have experienced at one point or another. Long, Long Winter answers the age old question of why, with such bitterly cold winters, we choose to stay in Winnipeg. There’s also a serious side, found in songs like Hurry, which may make you question how you live your life. Finally, just as you begin to think that Where the City Ends is yet another slow acoustic folk album, you get a tongue-in-cheek pick me up from The Party Song, with its humorous depiction of Karl Marx getting high on a trampoline and Gandhi passed out drunk on the bathroom floor. All in all, Barber has created an interesting and eclectic album which many will enjoy. See him live Thursday, Oct. 29 at the Times Change(d).

Published in Volume 64, Number 9 of The Uniter (October 29, 2009)