It’s been a rough weekend, from a number of levels.
And then, low and behold, I hear this:
Cowboy Junkies: My Only Guarantee
Cowboy Junkies have, since the release of the elegant portrait of mixing simplicity and grace with a bitter-tongue venom that was Lay It Down, been one of my most heart-loved bands. They tend to, in the circles i traverse, get ignored-either because the name implies a sound that isn’t interesting (if that’s the case, it’s a misnomer), or because they’re just “the band that did that Lou Reed cover”.
Almost every other year since ‘96, they’ve continued to up their droning, gauzy feedback-and-whisper sound into something that’s less like Low and more like a sonic attack of candle-light. This, from their forthcoming At The End Of Paths Taken, illustrates the softer side of what they’ve moved into this year-a return to the Trinity Sessions string arrangements, but with a more fluid movement in song. The children’s choir-meets-Margo’s simple statement of “my only guarantee” is enough to break your heart softly, over and over again. The best Cowboy Junkies songs always sound like they’re hanging on just *this much* of a thread away from suicide, bleary-eyed in the morning light, and this is one of those.
There’s some fierce stuff on At The End Of Paths Taken (like “My Little Basquiat”, with that knife-throated whisper of a lyric “the kitchen floor is where it’s at”), but this morning, where I sit and where I am, this is what caught in my throat. I’m less worried about proving Cowboy Junkies as a band that should be given attention, and more concerned with just sharing how simply pretty this song is. They’re on tour, too (I can’t believe I missed them at the fucking Atlanta Botanical Gardens-’twas a bad time in my life, bad time ’twas), and I hope to catch them live for the first time. 200 more miles of gray asphalt and light, and all that.
