Leaf through the Cowboy Junkies' press clippings, and a distinct pattern emerges. "With the release of [insert title here], Canada's Cowboy Junkies abandon their trademark, lo-fi mood music in favor of a bold, new, and even aggressive sound." Remarkably, the comment seems to accompany *every* album the band puts out.

Blame it all on The Trinity Sessions, the Junkies' 1988 break-out album that established the quartet as critical darlings and heirs to the mope music throne previously warmed by the Velvet Underground and the Smiths. A decade later, they still can't shake the Trinity ghost.

"Everyone is like, 'The Cowboy Junkies always sound the same, but this one's different,'" laughs Junkies guitarist and songwriter Michael Timmins. "And we'd get that seven times in a row, so you'd think we'd be completely out there at this point ...."

Which brings us to Miles From Our Home, the Junkies' fifth studio album since Trinity Sessions, and easily their most forward-sounding since, well, 1996's Lay It Down. The difference this time is that, for all the radio-friendliness of songs like the title track and "New Dawn Coming,"Miles From Our Home is lyrically the band's bleakest effort to date. Averitable funeral march haunted by the ghosts of Cowboy Junkies friend Townes Van Zandt and Timmins' grandfather, the songs form a cycle of mourning from anger to rebirth.

"I think our music, my voice mostly, tends to sort of work with that side of things," says Michael's sister, Margo, whose whispery roar of a voice is the Junkies' calling card. "I think the hardest thing that we do is to do a happy pop tune; it's really hard for me. I mean, I'm in the studio and I'm like, 'did that sound happy?' It's just my voice lends itself to sadness. I don't know why, because I'm not necessarily a sad person ...."

Although Margo has co-written a handful of Cowboy Junkies songs, Michael generally writes and she interprets. She admits that some of his songs require effort in order for her to express them comfortably. Case in point, the new album's "Someone Out There," a deceptively sweet lullaby with the sucker-punchline, "But what I want to know/before you save my soul/is who gave this power to that f---er up there?"

"'Someone Out There' was a huge challenge for me as a singer because it was just in a whole other head space that I wasn't sure I could grasp," says Margo. "At first, I sort of approached it really aggressively because the words were harsh and aggressive, kind of ugly. It's not a word that I go around using every day. But then, as a singer I wanted to sing it because songs like that one and 'Murder in the Trailer Park' or something like that, they're real extreme for me, they're the challenging ones."

The Cowboy Junkies kick off a world tour on August 16 in Seattle. The bulk of the tour will be headlining dates, with the exception of five days with the Lilith Fair beginning August 23 in Denver. One might expect Michael and the other two men in the band --Michael and Margo's younger brother Peter on drums and bassist Alan Anton (whom Margo says the Timmins siblings "adopted"way back in pre-school) -- would bristle at the inevitable "chick band" passport required for Lilith stage time, but apparently that's not the case. Michael, in fact, says he's looking forward to it, chick band tag or no.

"They've put up with that nonsense for so long that it' not a problem with them," says Margo. "If the Lilith Tour's a good tour to get on, and if it gives us exposure, then, okay, all of a sudden we're a chick band. Next week we won't be. Whatever."

RICHARD SKANSE