It's abundantly clear that the foundations are not going to be shaken at the Empire tonight when the road crew bring a vase of flowers out onto the stage, and carefully arrange them next to the stool. Tonight it is the proto alt-country family collective that is Cowboy Junkies - Margo Timmins and her brothers, eleven albums down the line.
Margo is a female Lou Reed, with a gravely, yet strangely mellifluous voice. It adds a richness to the fantastically evocative quality of some of their songs, the adultery themed 'Bread and Wine' for example, from the latest album 'Open'.
Back on their self owned label after flirtations with RCA and Geffen, the band now release their records on their website, which is plugged extensively in the show. Like people listening wouldn't know it. Or couldn't work it out. I think you can guess the URL.
The Cowboy Junkies can reduce a grown man to tears, and not just because they've got a mandolin - surely there must be some kind of law against that. It could just be the Pavlovian response to the chord changes that does it, but the bittersweet melancholy of the lyrics must also contribute. 'I went to see my doctor cause I thought I had a hole in my heart', Margo sings in 'Hard To Explain' (not a Strokes cover).
And at the end of the show, when Margo announces that she'll meet any fans that want to hang around in the foyer afterwards, it melts the hard stone of my cynical old heart. She actually cares for the fans. Sweet.
