Cowboy Junkies – Such Ferocious Beauty – Album Review
by Killian Laher

The Cowboy Junkies have survived Oliver Stone, alt-country and other brushes with the mainstream to remain a fiercely independent band.  This is their follow-up to last year’s covers album, Songs of the Recollection.

It opens with the relatively low-key What I Lost, which plods along pleasantly.  This is blown out of the water by the squalling guitar, slow, glorious grind of Flood, something of a centrepiece. Mid-paced rocker Hard To Build, Easy To Break has a mellow groove to it, along with some fine guitar work.  At the centre of everything is Margo Timmins on lead vocals, still sounding as strong as ever.

Circe and Penelope sound like a completely doomed pairing in the Cowboy Junkies’ hands, while Hell Is Real is muted in a spooked-out kind of way, almost mid-period Smog. Knives has a creeping, liquid guitar line with a touch of fiddle here and there, a glorious slice of moody Americana.  Mike Tyson (Here It Comes) is downcast and glacially paced while the final track Blue Skies is a comforting acoustic track.

For a band who deals in Americana, they avoid the obvious, aiming for a more cerebral brand of country.  Not quite as strong as 2018’s All That Reckoning, but not too far off.

Hard To Build. Easy To Break