Keeper of the Flame Luka Bloom

• 1 Make You Feel My Love 02:49
• 2 In Between Days 01:51
• 3 Throw Your Arms Around Me 03:38
• 4 Bad 05:28
• 5 Keeper of the Flame 03:09
• 6 Urge for Going 05:02
• 7 Wishing on a Star 02:28
• 8 No Surprises 03:03
• 9 Natural Mystic 02:27
• 10 If I Were a Carpenter 03:17
• 11 Dancing Queen 03:56
• Total Runtime 37:08

Info for Keeper of the Flame

A cover song can reveal many things: for an artist, it might be influences or ambitions, and for the song itself, it might be an unknown emotion that was lurking within, waiting for discovery. On his collection of covers, "Keeper of the Flame," Irish folkie Luka Bloom manages to mine 12 interesting songs and come up with possibly the most banal versions of them all.

The album starts off with yet another take on Dylan's "Make You Feel My Love," which is a raw, touching love song that Bloom manages to wash clean of its yearning and pain. Garth Brooks did a better version. A perfectly fine singer and guitar strummer, Bloom never rises above the level of a good acoustic performer at the local coffee shop, even as he runs through The Cure's "In Between Days," Radiohead's "No Surprises" and Joni Mitchell's "Urge for the Going." Some personality, please? Somewhere?

"Luka Bloom has a well-deserved reputation as one of Ireland's most gifted singer/songwriters, but he has also ranked among the most gifted cover artists in contemporary music. Bloom's independently released fifth album, Keeper of the Flame, is the first to focus exclusively on the singer's remarkable interpretive skills. Bloom's covers avoid the treacherous pitfalls of unimaginative imitation on one side and obnoxious desecration on the other. He also demonstrates the impressive breadth of his musical tastes. Among the featured songwriters are folk giants Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, rock supergroups U2, Radiohead, and the Cure, reggae king Bob Marley, and even ABBA. Despite the fact that many of these songs were written by artists whose outlooks tend to be considerably darker than Bloom's, Keeper of the Flame is every bit as optimistic, mellow, and romantic as the singer's self-penned efforts. In some cases, this can be attributed to the song selection; "In Between Days" has to be one of the cheeriest songs Robert Smith has ever written, and "Make You Feel My Love" is so gentle and direct that it's almost hard to believe it was composed by Dylan and not Bloom. Radiohead's "No Surprises" is the only track that seems awkward in these benevolent surroundings. Thom Yorke's gorgeous melody works well in the stripped-down arrangement, but Bloom's sincere reading extracts nearly all of the song's acidic undertones. Nevertheless, it is the earnest warmth of Bloom's vocals (gracefully backed with light Celtic instrumentation) that holds this collection together so beautifully. The Australian edition of Keeper of the Flame includes a bonus disc with five live tracks -- a significant addition since it represents the first officially sanctioned concert release by an artist with a reputation for brilliant live performances." (Evan Cater, AMG)

Luka Bloom

Luka Bloom
In 1972 Barry Moore wrote a song called WAVE UP TO THE SHORE. Not his first song, but it had something. He did some gigs, wrote some songs; and in 1987 he boarded a plane for New York, and Luka Bloom was born. Riverside was released in 1990 on REPRISE Records and it was followed by THE ACOUSTIC MOTORBIKE, AND TURF.

During the early 1990s the life of writing, recording and touring took off. The US, Australia, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, and The UK are frequent destinations for Luka’s songs. As well as his own touring, he has performed at some of the great festivals: Pinkpop (Holland); Roskilde (Denmark), Torhout\Werchter (Belgium), Newport Folk Festival (US) Byron Blues Festival(Australia), Glastonbury and Cambridge, (UK). And most of all, he regularly sings all over the island of Ireland, where he lives in County Clare.

This album contains no booklet.