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MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
The Canadian singer and songwriter Bruce Cockburn has released his 27th CD. It's called "You've Never Seen Everything," and features guest appearances from Emmylou Harris, Jackson Browne and Sam Phillips among others. Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers caught up with Cockburn during a recent visit to Chicago and has this profile.
JEFFREY PEPPER RODGERS reporting:
There's a verse in the U2 song "God, Pt. 2" that goes like this: `Heard a singer on the radio late last night; says he's going to kick the darkness till it bleeds daylight.' The reference is to the Bruce Cockburn song "Lovers in a Dangerous Time" from his 1984 album "Stealing Fire." Twenty years later, Cockburn is kicking at the darkness with as much passion as ever.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. BRUCE COCKBURN: (Singing) By the cries of birds, by the lies I've heard, by my own loose talk, by the way I walk, by the closet beasts, by the laws of priests, by the glutton's feasts, by the word police. By the planet's arc and by the falling dark, by the state of the art, by the beat of my heart, by dark finance, by the marketing dance, by the poverty trance, by the fateful glance.
RODGERS: "You've Never Seen Everything" contains some of Cockburn's most politically charged music since the '80s when his travels in Central America produced anthems of outrage like "Call It Democracy" and "If I Had a Rocket...