For all the gentle pleasures that unfold in the typical Cowboy Junkies song – guitars that spin out delicate snowflake riffs, the occasional silvery phrase that catches you off guard – it's hard to ignore the band's patented formula. There are only so many times you can be startled by the incongruity of junkyard and trailer-park imagery set against Margo Timmins' fragile, waxypetal vocals. On Pale Sun Crescent Moon, the Junkies' fifth album, the novelty wears thin. Timmins' voice is lovely, but its languidness tugs at some of the songs, leaving them dangling like droopy sweater sleeves. Sometimes, though, the songs' tired imagery leaves her hanging: A line about "an old, rusted pickup and a mad dog in the yard" might have been fished from the bottom of a grab bag of country-rock clichés.

The songs that work best buck the formula: On "The Post" (written by Dinosaur Jr's J Mascis), Timmins' vocals have extra body, rippling behind Ken Myhr and Michael Timmins' beautifully bent neopsychedelic guitar lines; and on the bluesy "Hard to Explain," Margo takes a throwaway line ("Love is so hard to explain/It'll make you forget your name") and rubs so much vinegar into it that it burns. That's the kind of quick-and-dirty approach you need to take if you're going to sing about tough guys with scalps hanging from their belts ("Pale Sun") or turn a cup of tea into a metaphor for love ("Cold Tea Blues"). Most of the time, Cowboy Junkies' mix of tough and tender just sounds overboiled – not cowboys, not junkies. (RS 677)

STEPHANIE ZACHAREK