Cowboy Junkies – Rarities, B-Sides And Slow, Sad Waltzes

Ever since their acclaimed late-’80s breakthrough The Trinity Session, the Cowboy Junkies’ sound — underamped instruments, lugubrious tempos and singer Margo Timmins’ glacial cool — has become an alt-cowpoke cliche. The very style that brought them acclaim quickly became the critical stick used to beat up the band, recently cut loose by Geffen during a roster purge.

But anyone who continued to check out their catalog knows the Junkies evolved, in their own modest way, through new instrumentation, expanded musicianship and ever-improving songwriting. That history is partly documented on Rarities, B-Sides And Slow, Sad Waltzes, a collection of non-album tracks issued by their revived indie label, Latent.

If you were surprised by the trippy sound of “Ooh Las Vegas”, the group’s contribution to the recent Gram Parsons tribute, expect to scrape your jaw off the floor after this disc’s opening shot, I Saw Your Shoes, a frantic workout that matches Margo’s most detached singing with seething guitars. A swaggering take on Bob Dylan’s “If You Gotta Go” is equally uncharacteristic, but the singer’s voice has trouble conveying the lyric’s bravado.

There’s lots here safely within the Junkies’ somber idiom: their hushed cover of the Grateful Dead’s “To Lay Me Down”, the Lay It Down outtake “A Few Simple Words”, the graceful “Five Room Love Story”, the soundtrack toss-offs “Leaving Normal” and “The Water Is Wide”. But even as the recent leftover “Sad To See The Season Go” threatens to slide into soft-rock blandness, the track soars on a gorgeous double-tracked vocal. Better still is the a cappella unlisted track, which displays both their well-known mastery of traditional balladry and their undervalued sense of mischief.