Cowboy Junkies - 2022 - Songs of the Recollection

Cowboy Junkies - 2022 - Songs of the Recollection @Flac

When the Cowboy Junkies released their first album in 1986, Whites Off Earth Now!!, eight of the nine songs were covers, and their second, the 1988 breakthrough hit The Trinity Session, introduced them to a larger audience with their interpretations of Lou Reed's "Sweet Jane" and Patsy Cline's "Walkin' After Midnight." Recording other people's songs and giving them a sound of their own is deeply ingrained in the Cowboy Junkies' working method, so it's no great surprise that they've chosen to release an album devoted entirely to covers. 2022's Songs of the Recollection features five new recordings of tunes from artists they admire, along with four previously released tracks that appeared on EPs (Vic Chesnutt's "Marathon" and the Cure's "Seventeen Seconds") or tribute albums (Gram Parsons' "Ooh Las Vegas" and Gordon Lightfoot's "The Way I Feel"). This is very much in the tradition of what we've come to expect from the Cowboy Junkies in the year 2022, and that is not at all a bad thing. 

As a singer, Margo Timmins has learned to adapt her understated murmur to a wide range of moods and melodic frameworks, and she's consistently lovely here, especially in her rueful takes on David Bowie's "Five Years" and Neil Young's "Love in Mind." Guitarist Michael Timmins has a gift for weaving expressive dissonance and electric accents into the folky vibe common to their performances, and the overdriven finale of "Five Years," the sudden showers of fuzz in Neil Young's "Don't Let It Bring You Down," and the reverb-enhanced feedback on "Ooh Las Vegas" attest to his status as an unsung hero of noise guitar. And the rhythm section of bassist Alan Anton and drummer Peter Timmins are reliable in their excellence, knowing when to rise and fall with the mood of the songs and giving Margo and Michael just the right sort of musical support. 

In many respects, the Cowboy Junkies have changed very little over the course of 35-plus years, but Songs of the Recollection presents that as a virtue. This band have maintained a creative vision that's served them beautifully, and their commitment to the power of dynamics and finding the details of a song by leaving room to ponder the details and textures has led them to write some great material and also find unexplored landscapes in the work of other tunesmiths. Songs of the Recollection captures them doing the latter with grace and intelligence. (AllMusic)

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Cowboy Junkies - 2023 - Such Ferocious Beauty

Cowboy Junkies - 2023 - Such Ferocious Beauty @320

What with Michael Timmons’ day to day job as a ‘go to record producer’ it’s no wonder it’s over 5 years since Cowboy Junkies last album of new material; although their covers album RECOLLECTIONS was pretty damn good in every which way; but at RMHQ it’s ‘their songs’ we crave like a crack addict.

So it was with baited breath and a big mug of coffee that I tentatively pressed ‘play’ on the office Hi-Fi; as the Timmons siblings are more than capable of throwing us a curve ball … with great relief opening song What I Lost is as deep, dark and beautiful as any fan could hope for, with Margo’s stunning and distinctive voice as cool as ever, while Michael’s guitar playing swoops and soars with additional rumbling from the top end of the fret board unlike any of the Guitar Gods on the road today.

With that in mind; the opening to Track #2 Flood, is almost psychedelic …. even Gilmouresque; and continues throughout while Ms Timmons remains front and centre apparantly oblivious to the ‘wall of sound’ her brother is creating behind her.

While I can’t say I’ve liked every Cowboy Junkies album; like you can’t like every Neil Young album, as both are contrary at times; ‘never making the same album twice’ …. which is actually a good thing; and Such Ferocious Beauty is a perfect moniker for this particular bundle of songs, with the slow and acoustic Canadian Gothic song Hell Is Real being juxtaposed between the punchy Shadows 2; about the Timmins’s father falling deeper and deeper under the spell of dementia; and Circe and Penelope with it’s haunting harmonica and rustic acoustic guitars; which is one of their few songs this century that sounds anything like Trinity Sessions; but the addition of a cello halfway through takes it into a whole new stratosphere.

Even after four plays now; this album is still throwing up surprises; possibly because while I’ve been digesting one song it’s meant I haven’t always been listening intently to what follows; which is why the intense and simmering story in Throw a Match has just taken me by such surprise …. was it there this morning?

It must have been, but I couldn’t remember it from the first three plays.

Weird, I know … but that’s the Cowboy Junkies for you.

Tucked away in the middle is a very important song in the Cowboy Junkies canon of work; and that’s Knives. As intense and complex as you’d expect; but here the addition of a violin finds the band setting sail to unchartered territory …. and I love it.

There’s an all encompassing darkness, and even ‘fear’ (courtesy of some scary guitar playing!) to Mike Tyson (Here It Comes) but the sensitive way Margo delivers the story makes this a full on contender for being my Favourite Song; but the staggeringly beautiful Blue Skies with its birdsong opening and tender acoustic guitar accompaniment just about edges it out of that first place.

Yet, again there is another song here that has just unravelled and took my breath away; so I suppose I have to make Hard To Build. Easy To Break its equal and therefore a joint Favourite Song.

There are highs and lows here, darkness and light too and the three multi-talented Timmins siblings alongside lifelong friend Alan Anton are still pushing boundaries all the while; but you always know they will never over step the mark in the name of experimentation. (Rocking Magpie)

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