Bruce Wozny has done it all on Sleeping Dogs, and very nicely. He wrote the songs, sang, played most of the instruments, and even designed and laid out the packaging! It was clearly a labor of love, and that shows.

The twelve songs were written over the course of 13 years, and I wish he'd dated them; it would be interesting to see how his songwriting has developed over the years. The songs span quite a range of songwriting sophistication, and I would have enjoyed comparing these levels with the songs' creation dates.

The songs cover a wide range of subjects, from love and friendship, through one's place in the world, to evocative poetry. Each one has its charm, although I prefer the ones where the rhyming schemes aren't as entirely predictable as they are on a few. That's a minor quibble, though, and even the ones with the most basic rhymes often cover subtle and sensitive topics.

One of my favorite songs here is "Out in the Yard." How many songs have you heard with affectionate references to "baby mosquitos learning to fly?" The song is a paean to spring's arrival, with its lilacs and its black flies both.

I liked the evocative songs that capture a moment or a mood. From "The Warmer Side of Cool," "on the warmer side of cool, I'll be dreaming / and my heart will turn to gold." The simple guitar picking sets off the lyrics and melody perfectly. "Sweet Dreams" is a gentle lullaby for adults. "Letting Go" captures the moment when we realize a love is gone for good, and that's OK; we can move on to the future while valuing the past. And "Long Way Home" describes the process of challenging oneself: "Out on the ocean alone with the wind / you learn how to sail or you learn how to swim / It's a long way home but it ain't too far." In all these songs the melodies and clean arrangements add to the impact of the lyrics.

Wozny included the complete lyrics to all his songs in the liner, something I wish all singer/songwriters did. Although they are run together in a big paragraph, each song's title is picked out in boldface and the typeface used is much larger then in most liner notes, and with enough spacing between the lines to make it easy to read.

The album's title, "Sleeping Dogs," has nothing directly to do with any of the songs on the CD. I'll quote part of the explanation on the liner: "Dogs are incapable of hiding their feelings. While humans are busy with practical things, dogs sleep in quiet corners. ... The songs on this CD are like dogs which slept quietly, until one day I was alerted by a scratching sound...."

I enjoyed this album quite a lot, and hope to hear more of Wozny in the future.

[ by Amanda Fisher ]