Cowboy Junkies – Miles From Our Home

“I wish I had a blue guitar/A blue guitar to play all night long/Singing songs of loss and love/Singing songs…’til morning comes.” “Blue Guitar”, the second song on Miles From Our Home, typifies the Cowboy Junkies on several levels. The Junkies have made a career out of singing songs of love, loss and loneliness, and this album is no exception. “Blue Guitar” was co-written by one of the Junkies’ songwriter heroes, Townes Van Zandt, and can be heard as a mournful tribute to his passing. “Blue Guitar” also best reflects the mood and spirit of a typical Cowboy Junkies song on an album that takes them farther away from their traditional sound than ever before.

Miles From Our Home could prove to be a good litmus test for separating the longtime Junkies addict from the more recent convert. Michael Timmins’ guitar work remains appealingly languid, Margo Timmins’ vocals continue to be luminously aloof, and the songs are of high quality. But the Junkies have never sounded so, well, upbeat before. That can perhaps be attributed to the faster tempos of some of the songs, but the more likely reason is the plush, radio-friendly shine that producer John Leckie (The Verve, Radiohead) gives to the album. It’s an adjustment to listen to a Cowboy Junkies album that prominently features multilayered guitars and atmospheric backdrops.

For longtime Junkies fanatics who believe the band peaked with the lo-fi, single-microphone minimalism of The Trinity Session in 1988, the lush settings on Miles From Our Home may sound overproduced. For more recent fans, however, the mainstream production will sound like a natural progression from the Junkies’ recent albums, especially 1996’s Lay It Down. You can still hear the band’s somber, country-folk heart beating on this album, but it’s well camouflaged at times.