For all his upbeat drinkin’ and rodeoin’ songs that invite folks to dismiss their woes and sing along, Alberta memory keeper Corb Lund’s music is most extraordinary when it embraces tensions. Range-raised Lund, who has earned 11 Canadian Country Music Awards and a Juno during his 30-year solo career (overlapping his time in punk-metal-country cult band the smalls), thrives on dichotomy.

His audience is an unlikely mix of hip city dwellers and ranchers and roughnecks smooshed together on dance floors. His beliefs don’t really fit into left or right, thus bringing together disparate listeners who might have been spatting on social media moments before the first notes ring out. Lund’s lyrics capture the dire foreplay of industrial sprawl and its hunger for exquisite prairie and mountain Edens as well as a wistfulness for the simplicity of the frontier even while celebrating modern existence by wooing the gothest girl around. He compacts a whole life inside a tautly penned tear-drop ballad, then has every rump rockin’ with the next song.

A tuneful, erudite teller of Technicolor tales, Lund builds a wide, nuanced loop to capture intimate moments, the mundane repetition of daily ranch life, and the agony of soldiers who are sold to war like a product. From the big picture to minutia, Lund’s wisdom in seldom picking sides – the heartbreaker and heartbroken are equally honoured – and his gift for melody ensures you soak it all up.

- Mary-Lynn Wardle