Narc. Magazine Online
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Lee Fisher enjoys a magical, moody and melancholy show
Image by Iam Burn
It’s forty years since the first Cowboy Junkies album, thirty-eight since the one that made the most impact. But what an impact. The Trinity Session – famed for being recorded around just one microphone in a Toronto church, almost entirely in one day – had an impact on country and underground music that’s still being felt today. I wonder if we’d have got Low without The Trinity Session’s stark minimalism? Or The Delines’ hushed country soul?
Since then, the band – three fifths of whom are the Timmins siblings – have been steadily releasing and touring, to no great fanfare (at least outside Canada) but with a lot of accrued respect. I was pleasantly surprised to see they sold out the Fire Station, but their set proved it’s well deserved.
For nearly two hours (two sets and an encore), they captured something genuinely magical, a mostly moody and melancholy slow burn mix of country, folk and gospel that featured less Trinity Session covers than you’d expect. If a couple of the songs veered a little too country rock, mostly it was wonderful stuff. Margo Timmins’ voice is a truly special thing, the band were subtle and affecting (touring member Jeff Bird did some remarkable things with a mandolin, as well as playing various percussion, melodica and guitar) and the audience were held rapt throughout. The bass-driven moodiness of Missing Children could have been mid-period Bad Seeds, What I Lost – a song about dealing with dementia and death – was a real heartbreaker, and their take on Neil Young’s Powerderfinger (“we’re obliged, as Canadians…”) was gorgeous. If the three Trinity Session songs – Walking After Midnight, Blue Moon (Song For Elvis Presley) and the song that changed it all, Sweet Jane – got the biggest reaction, they didn’t seem to mind, but it would be a mistake to file Cowboy Junkies under ‘that Velvet Underground cover band’ because there’s forty years of magic to bask in.
