To be surprised to see Cowboy Junkies offering an album entirely composed of covers would be to know the band from Ontario very badly. It is also a rereading of SweetJaneLou Reed’s song for Velvet Underground, which got his album noticed Trinity Sessions in 1988. The habit remained over the following decades. Margo Timmins, her brothers Michael and Peter as well as their good friend Alan Anton have drawn on the repertoires of Elvis (bluemoon), by Neil Young (Powderfinger) or Bob Dylan (If You Gotta Go, Go Now).
Posted at 5:00 p.m.
We also find Neil Young on Songs of the Recollection. Twice Rather Than Once: Cowboy Junkies Passes Don’t Let It Bring You Down and Love In My Mind at the mill of his nocturnal rock from which emerges the inhabited voice, of an evanescent roundness, of Margo Timmins. On the first, the guitars roar with restraint, on the second, they turn to subdued rock.
Over the nine songs that make up the disc, we come across David Bowie (Five Years), The Rolling Stones (No Expectationsbeautifully reviewed), Gordon Lightfoot (The Way I Feel). Only one choice frankly surprises: Cowboy Junkies resumes Seventeen Secondstitle track from the group’s second album The Cure, which Alan Anton coats with a slippery bass, but which is also crossed by delicately tortured guitars.
We recognize the whole sound palette of Cowboy Junkies through these covers, from vaporous folk to slow and lacerated rock, its Americana features, and above all this impression of comfort that we always feel in contact with the voice of Margo Timmins. Songs of the Recollection doesn’t have the soul of the band’s best records, but has everything it takes to please those who have been following it for decades.
Songs of the Recollection
Cowboy Junkies
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