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“WHERE MOST PERFORMERS WILL SNAP THEIR FINGERS IN TIME, GP WILL SLAM HIS FIST INTO HIS PALM.”
—A fan on the Bloodshot website

"The best thing Graham Parker's done since his 1970s heyday." Roger Holland, Popmatters

Sometimes an artist is anointed a “legend.” Sometimes this artist’s body of work is so consistently lauded, of such ongoing interest and creativity, the audience might be tempted to take the level of craft for granted. Sometimes such an artist, after a time of flying beneath the radar, emerges with a run of stunning material ascending beyond time and genre. Sometimes this artist casts a shadow large enough they are known by just their initials. Graham Parker is such an artist and this is his time.

Thirty years into a storied career in rock ‘n’ roll that began with his band The Rumour (pre-saging new wave, pub rock and punk) Graham Parker finds himself at the absolute top of his game and in the midst of a extended creative hot streak. Hot on the heels of the Bloodshot releases Your Country (2004), Songs of No Consequence (2005), the seething digital-only single about Iraq—the now sadly outdated “2000 Funerals”—and the blistering live album 103 Degrees in June (2006), Don’t Tell Columbus crackles with desperation and redemption sung with rich, passionate power. And hooks. Lots and lots of effortless hooks. Yes, the new millennium has thus far been very good to GP and music fans reap the rewards.

Suffused with the heft of the epic, Don’t Tell Columbus’s lyrical and emotional resonance straddles the Atlantic and evinces GP’s stature as one of the most gifted writers in rock ‘n’ roll. From the personal and metaphorically grand “The Other Side of the Reservoir” to the overtly political and swinging “Stick to the Plan,” this album ripples with tension between the melancholic, the urgent and the hopeful. Best of all, it’s wrapped in his gifted brawny pop and blue-eyed soul smarts. Only GP can have you happily humming along to songs swaddled in desperate loneliness and internal mayhem.

It is unhealthy, perhaps even obscene, that someone should be able to come up with an album this good this far into their career.

...and the critics agree...

"Don't Tell Columbus is a little masterpiece of snarling intensity and wry reflection, and Parker's singing displays a wide Dylan-esque streak that grounds his disappointed romanticism firmly in the pop-pundit tradition." Monica Kendrick Chicago Reader