The Canadian missing link between Emmylou Harris and Grandaddy has been criticised more than once for retaining the same sound: distinctive, hazy, lazy, folk-country in which Margo Timmins's vocals suggest the world-weariness of her songwriting brother Michael's characters, while simultaneously embodying the essence of a breeze-blown summer night.
But although a band who recently chose to return to their own label after a rather troubled decade on majors are unlikely to change simply because a few people think it's about time they did, sixteen years and eleven albums are bound to have some impact. And they have: Cowboy Junkies have made a 'growing older' record - there's a greater preoccupation with loss and death, reflected in a heavier, darker musical cast.
'I Did It All For You', is the opening scene-setter, a pant-soiling murder ballad. Percussive thuds stalk their way through a haunting, claustrophobia-inducing mist, while Margo intones "She took her dentures from his mouth and placed them in her own." Eat your heart out, Nick Cave! Such hypnotic intensity would be too much for a whole album, but fortunately it lifts as the record progresses.
From splendid second track 'Dragging Holes', the heavy element is in riffs rather than poo-your-pants atmospherics as the Junkies go rockier, bolstering their melodic alt-folk with harder, bluesier edges. 'Thousand Year Prayer', meanwhile, is a foray into the beauty of the piano bar torch song a la Everything But The Girl. All in all, it seems 'Open' should be read as a command.
