Cowboy Junkies Songs Of The Recollection LP

TAS Rated 4/5 Music, 4/5 Sonics in the July/August 2022 Issue of The Absolute Sound!

Songs Of The Recollection features covers of well known songs from artists including David Bowie, Gram Parsons, The Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Gordon Lightfoot, Bob Dylan and The Cure.

Saying the Junkies "cover" songs doesn't quite do them justice. Like greats from the classic pop standards era, the Junkies interpret the music of others. They embrace the songs, adapting them in their own style.

Michael Timmins recalls, "Long before we were musicians, we were music fans. We didn't grow up sitting around the kitchen table playing instruments and harmonizing. We grew up sitting around the record player listening to each other's record collections and having our minds blown. This was the passion that we shared. Our goal has always been to create music that took hold of the listener the way that this music took hold of us. These are some of the songs and some of the artists that found their way into our lives and eventually into our repertoire over the past fifty years."

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...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.

These sessions span years, but the sound is balanced and Michael Timmins (supported by bassist Alan Anton and sibling drummer Peter Timmins) employs an arsenal of guitar chops, ranging from folk and blues to rock and noise pop. Call it moods for moderns - family favorites from a group of dedicated rock fans.