Quietly ushering alternative-country into mainstream popular music with their cover of “Sweet Jane” in 1988, Cowboy Junkies have never been shy about covering the music that influenced them as musicians, and perhaps more notably, as music fans. With their new compilation, Songs Of the Recollection, the band pulls together a handful of their best covers from the last few decades in what turns out to be a extremely cohesive album. The band’s ability to blend post-punk, psychedelic rock, and folk into a signature sound that exists outside any distinct genre has served Cowboy Junkies well over the last three decades and this collection hints at the various threads sewn together in their music.
Opening with what Michael Timmins calls “the ultimate opening album track…EVER”, David Bowie’s “Five Years” has grown into one of their most memorable covers ever since they added it to their live sets a few years ago. The studio version captures the band’s live power, especially in the delivery of vocalist Margo Timmins. More relevant than ever, Timmins delivers the lyrics with the urgency of someone who has lived long enough to know that time is precious, looming apocalypse or not.
The sharp ending of “Five Years” opens up into one of the band’s most layered tracks – a driving take on Gram Parsons’ “Ohh Las Vegas” with Margo’s voice mixed into a dizzying swirl. Recorded around the time of the band’s Miles From Our Home in 1998, the song reveals a more psychedelic sound that casual listeners might find surprising if they haven’t seen the band live. It’s a clever pairing with Bowie’s “Five Years” and Margo’s attitude makes it clear that Las Vegas is a good place for the end of the world
Having first covered The Rolling Stones in the 1980s with a Townes Van Zandt-inspired version of “Dead Flowers” which almost ended up on The Caution Horses, the band again finds their way into a treasured Stones track with “No Expectations”. It’s played loose in the spirit of the Stones and leaves you hoping for an entire album of Stones covers from the band. Two Neil Young tracks, including a lovely “Love In Mind”, anchor the middle of the album. On stage, Margo often jokes bands from Canada are required to play at least one Young cover every show and the band often does with the included “Don’t Let It Bring You Down” becoming a live staple in recent years.
If the album has an unexpected highlight, it comes at the end of the collection with a chilling take on The Cure’s “Seventeen Seconds”. The glacial pace and the emptiness between notes takes the listener back to the band’s first album, 1986’s Whites Off Earth Now!, where the band draped their post-punk influences over the bones of traditional blues tracks. It is at that crossroads where the band’s unique alchemy took form with melodic bass lines and jagged guitars born from bands such as The Cure, Gang of Four, and Joy Division sitting quietly behind Margo Timmins. The band would eventually filter everyone from Bob Dylan to Hank Williams through their amps and prove consistently excellent on record and on stage in the decades that followed. With Songs Of the Recollection, Cowboy Junkies tip their hat to the artists that inspired that journey and share a peek behind the mystery of their own music. It’s a deeply rewarding listen, as is always the case with this band.
Physical copies of this excellent collection can be ordered here.