CD Odyssey Disc 800: Cowboy Junkies

After an exciting day of football watching, where my beloved Miami Dolphins won a close one over the Eagles, I am squeezing in this momentous review – my 800^th – before the evening game gets going in earnest.

Disc 800 is….Lay it Down

Artist: Cowboy Junkies

Year of Release: 1996

What’s up with the Cover? The white background was a fad in the nineties, both for album covers and music videos. So was featuring dancers in spandex shorts, so at least the Cowboy Junkies knew where to draw the line.

How I Came To Know It: By the time this album came out I was a firm fan. Even so, I didn’t buy the album immediately, but a few years later. I don’t know why. I suspect it was a money thing.

How It Stacks Up:  I have five Cowboy Junkies albums and it seems like each time I review one I end up bumping the rest down a bit in this section. I guess that just means I like all their albums. Once again I am bumping – this time “Pale Sun, Crescent Moon” (reviewed back at Disc 267) is getting moved out of third to make room for “Lay it Down.”

Ratings: 4 stars

After the relatively louder rock and roll sound of “Pale Sun, Crescent Moon” the Cowboy Junkies returned to the softer understated feel of “The Caution Horses” for “Lay it Down.”

The lessons learned from “Pale Sun…” remain, with a thicker more layered sound, but the songs on “Lay It Down” feel introspective and quietly thoughtful even by Cowboy Junkies standards.

The result is a record that has to be played loud or played on head phones to be appreciated the way it is intended. Since I listened on headphones on my walk home from work I got to hear it in its best light.

Part of this is the production, which is expansive, without ever feeling busy or overdone. There is a lack of edges to the sound and the instruments often sound like they are being played underwater. The band also knows just when to let Margo Timmins’ voice rise up, thin and frail for some emotional high point. At the other end, the bass guitar gets a lot of love and grounds the tracks that might otherwise feel like they were about to drift away.

This production suits the themes of the album, which vacillate between the sad tales of things falling apart, and an inner core of character and determination that grows stronger when you survive those experiences.

The best example of both is “Hold On To Me” which has quickly become one of my favourite Cowboy Junkies songs. This is a song that looks for signs of love in those small and fragile moments that are so important and so often casually dismissed. This can be in casual conversation:

“If you offered me a point of view

Would I dismiss it saying that it was too

Black and white?

Or would I see it as the special thing

That it would no doubt be?

Hold on to me.”

Or just when you do simple tasks around the house:

“If I asked you for a simple thing

Would you do it without too much thinking or fuss?

Would you see it for the precious thing

That it would surely be?

Hold on to me.”

Bottom line: remember to take out the trash and empty the dishwasher. These little conversations and acts of kindness are the tiny threads that knit together become as strong as the steel cables that hold up a suspension bridge. Or as my friend Jeff likes to say, “Always say thank you, always say sorry.”

This being the Cowboy Junkies, there always has to be a darkness lurking out in the deep water. “Lonely Sinking Feeling” is a song that explores depression and anxiety, which can visit us even when everything in life is going great. Fortunately, although the Cowboy Junkies are masters of making you experience hopelessness, the song is so good you enjoy the wallow.

The guitar work on “Lay It Down” is mostly relaxed country strumming, surrounded by bluesy production. It is the gift of the Cowboy Junkies that they pull these sometimes disparate sounds together, and show you just how closely akin they are. Musically and lyrically this is an “inner space” record that leaves you feeling contemplative.

I finished listening to “Lay It Down” on my walk from work to dinner with friends on Friday. I arrived at the restaurant with two minutes of the album still to play. Instead of turning it off, I took a last minute turn into an alley forty feet from my destination.

There, in a quiet, dark and rain-soaked alley, I found a wall to lean against and let the final track, “Now I Know” wash over me. “Now I Know” is probably the most depressing song on the record. I took in all that Margo had to say about grief and broken spirits. Then I returned to the world, happier than ever to greet my dinner companions and stronger for having let this understated, subtly great record work its magic on me.

Best tracks: Something More Besides You, A Common Disaster, Hold On To Me, Lonely Sinking Feeling, Now I Know