Gordon Lightfoot: Sundown Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		0.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Gordon Lightfoot: Sundown Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 2, 2023

Gordon Lightfoot virtually defines mellowness, and that soothing, relaxing quality is part and parcel of Sundown, perhaps just slightly incredibly the only album Lightfoot released that made it to the vaunted Number 1 position on Billboard's charts. This was also the arguable last gasp of Lightfoot's "unplugged" era, though even this album has some electric guitar. As with the songs themselves, the quadrophonic version offered on this audio Blu-ray is often quite subtle, with few really "showy" effects, but the songs sound fantastic and are generally quite immersive in their own way. The two biggest singles from the album are the title track and "Carefree Highway".

Rhino is offering these Quadio releases with fun reproductions of the original LP labels, and so this particular release bears the old ochre - brown-ish Reprise branding.

The track list for this album is:

1. Somewhere U.S.A.
2. High and Dry
3. Seven Island Suite
4. Circle of Steel
5. Is There Anyone Home
6. The Watchman's Game
7. Sundown
8. Carefree Highway
9. The List
10. Too Late for Prayin'

Gordon Lightfoot: Sundown Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

While there is video content here, like most hi-res audio Blu-rays, it's simply a menu, and because this release allows you to use the color buttons on your remote to choose which audio codec (red for DTS-HD Master Audio 4.0, yellow for DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0), you really don't even have to have your display on to enjoy this release. I've heard from several regular readers of my long running hi-res audio Blu-ray reviews that they'd actually prefer (repeated) screenshots of the menu rather than photos of the band, etc., on reviews, so you get seven screenshots of the menu here.

Gordon Lightfoot: Sundown Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Gordon Lightfoot: Sundown offers DTS-HD Master Audio 4.0 and DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 options, and I'm assuming anyone interested in this release is going to want to listen to the quadrophonic version, so the bulk of my comments will focus on that. As mentioned above, this is a somewhat subtle and even reserved four channel offering, though if you really pay attention to smaller details, there is some discrete channelization on tap. For example, what sounds like a finger cymbal (?) or other small percussion instrument clearly emanates from the right rear channel in "Somewhere U.S.A.", and there are some other salient examples (kind of interestingly, often percussion instruments like congas) that tend to emanate mostly from one speaker, but what I noticed the most was a kind of "front and back" imaging where, for example, Gordon's beautiful voice is stationed in the front while some of the lush strings and even acoustic guitars are in the back speakers. The result tends to be a bit more of a "mix" than more widely imaged quadrophonic offerings, but it's quite immersive and fidelity is top notch. There is some verbiage in the insert booklet that mimics similar information in other 4.0 audio Blu-rays about how to utilize bass management, but I'd say whatever choice your particular system offers, don't expect a surplus of low end emanating from the subwoofer (per design), which is not to suggest that there's any real lack in either the lower midrange or actual lowest frequencies.

Gordon Lightfoot: Sundown Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There is no supplemental content offered.

Gordon Lightfoot: Sundown Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Sundown finds Lightfoot continuing in the groove he had started to develop as soon as he came to Warner/Reprise in 1970, and that's both a plus and a minus. Lightfoot's evocative voice and secure songcraft suffuses this album, but there may be just a hint of "been there, done that" to it as well. This quadrophonic offering isn't particularly showy in terms of exploiting four channels in a hyperbolic manner, but it's nicely immersive with excellent fidelity. Recommended.