Cowboy Junkies evolve the same way they do everything—slowly
by Mike Gibson
Listening to Cowboy Junkies bassist Alan Anton speak is not all that different from listening to that distinctive unit he plays for. Much like the Junkies' languorous strains, Anton's voice has a tranquil essence; he speaks with the loitering, hazy equanimity of a lazy afternoon.
But that's unsurprising, given that Anton and his bandmates—the Timmins siblings, Michael, Peter, and singer Margo—have been together more than 15 years now, their personal and musical identities having woven a seamless mesh that's as rich and recognizable as that of any musicians you'd care to name.
"We've received some criticism from time to time for maintaining our identity," Anton muses in his elliptical baritone, fielding the latest in a flurry of phone interviews from a hotel room in Indianapolis.
"That's a funny thing to me, because the ultimate goal for any band is to find a unique sound, something that doesn't change from year to year. You can't win [with critics]. It's either one thing or the other; if we had changed, it would have been, 'Oh no, you changed!'"
The Junkies' latest compact disc Open, released on the group's own Latent Recordings imprint in conjunction with Rounder Records, is much in keeping with the group's previous offerings, serving up a mostly placid, though occasionally gritty, collection of tunes about love and life and loss, songs rich with both natural imagery and religious symbolism.
Which isn't to say the Cowboy Junkies have remained stagnant. Open has been hailed by many critics as the group's most vital, most texturally varied and rock-oriented release in years. The judiciously employed noise-rock flourishes on songs like "I Did It All for You" (the album's first track) provide tasty counterpoint to the gentle, opiated proto-country and electric folk with which the band is generally associated.
"We're always sort of evolving," Anton says. "We don't really know what direction we're going in; we just keep doing it. We don't look at how things are going from one record to the next, where we were or where we're going. Each record is like a moment frozen in time.
"The main difference on Open is that it's pretty much live in the studio with very few overdubs. It's kind of organic. The idea was just to capture the energy of the band playing those songs, which I think we did very successfully."
Anton says he and his bandmates have found kindred spirits in American country and roots-rockers such as Wilco, Lucinda Williams and Gillian Welch, although he maintains that "we don't try to spend too much time trying to identify with other people. We want to be our own thing."
The Junkies are hardly in peril of being separated from their hard-won identity anytime soon. Ever since the advent of their seminal second album The Trinity Sessions, the band's memorable sobriquet has been a familiar one to serious music fans the world over.
Anton says the group members' distinctive musical personalities should receive at least some of the credit for creating that marked recognition factor. Drawing from the ethereal energy of Margo Timmins' hauntingly somnolent vocals and Michael Timmins' deft yet subdued guitar stylings, Cowboy Junkies songs constitute a genre unto themselves, an otherwise-uncategorizable amalgam of traditional musics and Velvet psychedelia that sets itself far distant from any other popular music of the day.
"Individually, we all play our instruments our own way," Anton says. "That's the secret to our sound. Somehow when we're together, it comes together in this great sound. The way it works together—it's the Cowboy Junkies."
But at times, Anton admits, the imposing shadow cast by The Trinity Sessions (and its remarkable trademark single, that lush and beautifully sleepy cover version of Lou Reed's "Sweet Jane") has hindered the group's efforts to bring attention to the rest of its worthy catalog.
"There was so much hype about it (Trinity), people reading about it in People Magazine or whatever, and that's just not going to happen every record," Anton says. "It affects the effort to get people who might be new fans interested, to get the ones outside the core audience to look beyond that one record.
"But the good thing is that everyone knows the band's name now because of that. And I think the serious listeners, the ones who actually pay attention to the music, they'll buy our new record."
August 30, 2001 * Vol. 11, No. 35
© 2001 Metro Pulse
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