Cowboy Junkies

The Toronto quartet Cowboy Junkies have made a career out of its soft-focus sound, initially emphasizing the drowsily pretty vocals of Margo Timmins, with brother Michael Timmins' droning guitar leads grad-ually assuming a bigger role. They've maximized that rather limited approach by evincing exquisite taste, particularly on the covers-heavy early albums, and by playing off the tension between Margo's lullaby voice and the frequently dire imagery of Michael's lyrics. The maelstrom-beneath-the-calm subtext was broached on the debut album, Whites Off Earth Now, notably on a Robert Johnson blues, in which Margo Timmins vows, "I'm gonna beat my man/Until I get satisfied."

Armed with a single microphone, the Cowboy Junkies took 14 hours to record the follow up: The Trinity Sessions. The songs were recorded in a church, and the band takes the notion of "hushed atmosphere" to a glorious and mesmerizing extreme on what remains its signature album. The Trinity Sessions is so seamless it makes the songs of Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, and the Velvet Underground sound like long-lost companions.

The deceptively tough female persona that first glimmered on Whites Off Earth Now is coaxed to the surface by Michael Timmins' ambitious songwriting on The Caution Horses and Black-Eyed Man, but the drowsy arrangements sound somehow less compelling with fuller production. The band's streak of ace covers ends on Caution Horses with a lukewarm version of Neil Young's "Powderfinger."
Pale Sun, Crescent Moon, signaled by an unlikely cover of Dinosaur Jr's "Post." Lay It Down slips back into old habits, the most stripped-down recording since Trinity, with a greater sense of groove, thanks to Alan Anton's rubbery bass lines. The band concentrates on honing its strengths, exploring absence (of a lover, or of feeling itself) with uncommon empathy and insight -- and it gives the album the feeling of a small but noble achievement.

Desperation sets in on Miles From Home, with producer John Leckie (Radiohead, Verve) on board to beef up the sound. He does, but what distinctive-ness the Junkies once had is lost in an avalanche of post- Lilith Fair orchestration and backing vocals. Open marks a more palatable progression; Michael Timmins' Southern-gothic tales of death and betrayal have never sounded creepier, and his acid-washed guitar provides a suitably menacing counterpoint to his sister's ghost-walking vocals. One Soul Now picks up on these sonic cues, but the songs aren't distinctive enough to exploit them. (GREG KOT)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide