Ah, yes, I remember the release of Cowboy Junkies' breakthrough, The Trinity Sessions, well. It was the fall of my second year in college, and something about the sound of the album stuck with me. It was digitally recorded, I read later, with one microphone, in some church in Toronto. The gentle, reverberating sound of Margo Timmins' voice, and the way she purred those country tunes and that VU cover, soothed me on many a lonely, drunken night. The following year, I started reaching for Galaxie 500's On Fire for those nocturnal journeys into oblivion, but I'd still put on The Trinity Sessions now and again to marvel at the record's pervasive and utterly convincing mood-- that relentlessly lonesome sound that bridged 50's Grand Ole Opry with Lou Reed's New York. It was, we see now, an inspired record, and the way it fused genres was actually somewhat ahead of its time.
I lost track of Cowboy Junkies after that. I'd hear a song of theirs occasionally, but none of them captured the atmosphere of that first record. In a few cases, as on the outstanding "If You Were the Woman and I Was the Man," it seemed possible that the songwriting had improved while I was away. The odds-and-ends collection Rarities, B-Sides and Slow, Sad Waltzes confirms it: though this record contains the usual assortment of covers (it's a Cowboy Junkies trademark, and they know how to make them their own), it's Michael Timmins' originals that stand out. Margo's bro is a first-rate songwriter with an impressive mastery of traditional North American forms and a gift for melody.
Though they've diversified over the years, slower songs are still what this band does best. The upbeat, almost-Stonesy "I Saw Your Shoes" isn't terrible, but Margo Timmins just doesn't have the vocal power to put rockers across. Fortunately, these attempts at shedding the "wimp band" tag are few, and we get plenty of opportunities to wallow in beautiful, spacious ballads like "Five Room Love Story" and "Love's Still There" (which, true to the album's title, is a waltz.)
Of the covers, it's the unlisted, a capella version of Bruce Springsteen's "My Father's House" (another one from Springsteen's Nebraska) that takes the prize. Margo Timmins' voice has always sounded great unaccompanied, but here we get to hear her goofing with the band during the recording process. This is odd coming from the Cowboy Junkies, a band always perceived as humorless, but Rarities, B-Sides and Slow, Sad Waltzes shows that they may have a few surprises left.
