COCKBURN LEANS LEFT

Quite unlike most performers of a similarly left-leaning bent, Bruce Cockburn understands that if you’re going to harp on politicians’ and dictators’ disregard for human life, it makes sense to go back now and then and detail just what makes life worth living. And there was a neat deliberateness Friday at the Wiltern Theatre in the way he’d follow one of his most bitter political songs (like “If I Had a Rocket Launcher”) with one reflecting his eternally romantic side (the new “World of Wonders”).

Folkie-cum-rocker Cockburn has sometimes tended to be more passionate in sentiment than delivery--which was not a problem Friday with Cockburn and a very aggressive six-piece band. Perhaps their neatest achievement was being able to summon up international musical atmospheres exotic enough to reflect his “world of wonders,” while maintaining enough of his inherent warmth to avoid ever seeming foreign .