Cowboy Junkies – Songs of the Recollection – Vinyl Record

Description

Cowboy Junkies – Songs of the Recollection – Vinyl Record

Cowboy Junkies have always been good interpreters, able to take a familiar song somewhere quieter and make its details newly noticeable. Songs of the Recollection gives that part of their music a full album of its own. Released in 2022, the nine-song collection brings together performances of material by David Bowie, Neil Young, the Rolling Stones, Gram Parsons, Gordon Lightfoot, Bob Dylan, Vic Chesnutt, and the Cure. Some recordings come from earlier projects, while others were made for this release. The common thread is the band's relationship with songs and musicians that became part of its musical life.

The selection makes sense for a band whose influences have never stopped at a single border between country, folk, and rock. Ooh Las Vegas brings in Gram Parsons, The Way I Feel reaches back to Gordon Lightfoot, and Marathon connects the collection to Vic Chesnutt. These are writers with very different voices, but Cowboy Junkies can find a way into each song through their own sense of pace and atmosphere. The album also lets those connections coexist with the Cure's Seventeen Seconds. Its inclusion says more about the band's listening history than any narrow description of its genre could.

Margo Timmins is central to that approach. Her singing allows a song to remain direct while drawing attention to uncertainty, tenderness, or unease within it. Michael Timmins' guitar, Peter Timmins' drums, and Alan Anton's bass provide the familiar setting around her. The band's restraint does not mean the songs lose their identity. Rather, it leaves space for a listener to notice how the melody and words behave when the performance is no longer tied to the arrangement that first made them familiar. That is a particularly appealing quality in a record built from material many listeners already know.

Two Neil Young songs, Don't Let It Bring You Down and Love in Mind, give the program an especially clear connection to another Canadian artist. Bowie's Five Years and the Stones' No Expectations offer different kinds of drama, while I've Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You brings in a comparatively recent Bob Dylan song. The choices range across decades, yet the collection has a personal scale. It sounds like musicians returning to songs that have stayed with them, rather than trying to tick off the best-known title from every artist they admire.

Several selections had previously appeared elsewhere, including Ooh Las Vegas, The Way I Feel, Marathon, and Seventeen Seconds. Gathering them here lets the performances sit beside newer recordings under one clear idea. Songs of the Recollection is useful both as an introduction to Cowboy Junkies' interpretive work and as a way for established listeners to hear that work in a concentrated setting. The album's interest lies in the conversation between those influences and the band's own identity: different writers supply the songs, but the patient playing and Margo Timmins' voice make the resulting record distinctly Cowboy Junkies.

Brand new, never played and still sealed in the factory plastic

Release Details

Artist

Cowboy Junkies

Album

Songs of the Recollection

Format

Vinyl Record

Number of vinyl records

1

Original album release

2022

Track Listing

Five Years

Ooh Las Vegas

No Expectations

Don't Let It Bring You Down

Love in Mind

The Way I Feel

I've Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You

Marathon

Seventeen Seconds