Sylvia Tyson: ‘The rules of the game change every day/and God help us all if we don’t want to play…’
By David McGee
AT THE END OF THE DAY
Sylvia Tyson
Stony Plain
“You can’t take on the whole wicked world/you can only do your best.” So sings Sylvia Tyson on the stunning “Generous Heart,” one of many stunning songs on what she has announced as her final album, culminating a much-honored career and taking the measure of the imprint on her heart left by lovers, friends and family at… well, at the end of the day. As willing as she is to love again (“Sweet Agony,” a telling title), experience has taught her that “love’s a dance in the dark at best” (“Cynical Love Song”), and it’s from that vantagepoint that the songs (all written or co-written by Ms. Tyson) chronicle her efforts to do her best with the hands she’s been dealt. There’s humor to be found in the wry what-aboutism informing the jaunty “Now Tell Me That You’ve Got the Blues” and the deepest sort of reflection is inspired by the familial gifts enumerated so poignantly in the heartfelt autobiography of “Long Chain of Love.”
‘Long Chain of Love,’ Sylvia Tyson, from At the End of the Day
‘Angels in Troubled Times,’ Sylvia Tyson, from At the End of the Day
‘No Crowd, No Show,’ Sylvia Tyson, from At the End of the Day
It’s a quiet outing, this, in which the slight quaver in Ms. Tyson’s comforting 83-year-old voice adds immeasurable gravitas to the frank nature of her lamentations and memories as it eddies around acoustic-based, Irish-tinged soundscapes, with fiddle and accordion prominent, that are themselves elegiac. “We can prevail against evil/each of us angels/in troubled times” (“Angels in Troubled Times”) she muses in the album’s most forthright message to younger generations. “No Crowd, No Show” is only metaphorically addressing abject loneliness when “the rules of the game change every day/and God help us all if we don’t want to play,” but in fact it is pondering death itself. If At the End of the Day has you looking into the abyss and seeing yourself staring back, “leaves in a storm, tossed by the wind,” perhaps it’s time to settle the old account. Something profound is going on here. Feel it and believe it.
