Blue River (album)


Blue River is an album by folk rock musician Eric Andersen, released in 1972. The album was reissued in 1999 by Columbia Legacy with two extra tracks.

Production

The album was recorded in Nashville, Tennessee. Joni Mitchell contributes vocals on the title track, "Blue River".

Chart performance

It was his first charting album, it peaked at No. 169 on the Billboard Top LPs & Tape during an eleven-week run on the chart.

Critical reception

No Depression called the album's sound "subtle and incandescent," writing that producer Norbert Putnam "crafted a sound that was both sensual and spacious — at times reminiscent of Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks — and always attentive to the languid melodies and sometimes frightening intimacy of Andersen’s lyrics." MusicHound Rock: The Essential Album Guide wrote that the album "stands alongside anything that the singer-songwriter produced during the '70s." The Los Angeles Times deemed it "a delicately melodic, bittersweetly introspective song cycle that found its place within the Carole King-James Taylor-Joni Mitchell-Jackson Browne school of sensitive pop."

Track listing

  1. "Is It Really Love at All" – 5:21
  2. "Pearl's Goodtime Blues" – 2:21
  3. "Wind and Sand" – 4:30
  4. "Faithful" – 3:15
  5. "Blue River" – 4:46
  6. "Florentine" – 3:31
  7. "Sheila" – 4:37
  8. "More Often Than Not" – 4:52
  9. "Round the Bend" – 5:38
  10. "Come To My Bedside, My Darlin'" – 4:58 ~*
  11. "Why Don't You Love Me" – 2:54 ~*
~* = Bonus Track on CD Release

Personnel

Production

  • Producer: Norbert Putnam
  • Recording Engineer: Stan Hutto/Glen Kolotkin/Stan Tonkel
  • Production Manager: Jessica Sowin
  • Art Direction: John Berg
  • Liner Notes: Anthony DeCurtis
  • Photography: Urve Kuusik/Sandy Speiser/Don Nelson