How Can There Be Another Day?

Album Review

How Can There Be Another Day? offers an album full of B-sides, live tracks, and rarities recorded by alternative country singer Gerald Collier and a crack band in 1997-1998. There are truly some fun oddities here, as with Collier's long acoustic country version of Leonard Cohen's "Is This What You Wanted?" Despite bizarre lines like "You were KY Jelly/And I was Vaseline" ("Vaseline" rhyming with "Steve McQueen"), Collier manages to inject real feeling into the countrified choruses. There's a solid version of Jagger/Richards' "Jigsaw Puzzle," though Collier and the band stick too close to the original tempo and arrangement. The same stumbling block enters the pathway on Richard Thompson's "Night Comes In," inviting the listener to ask why a similar version of a great song was needed. The take on John/Taupin's "Rocket Man" works better, delivering a version of what the song might have sounded like had it been performed by Crazy Horse. About half the songs on How Can There Be Another Day? are Collier originals, including a fine take of "Don't Discard Me" and the acoustic "For Taking My Baby Away." For fans of Collier's 1997-1998 work, this unearthed material serves as the next best thing to a lost album. ~ Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr., All Music Guide