The Wilderness (180g) (Vinyl)

Cowboy Junkies have a great new CD (10 tracks) release titled 'Wilderness' (Nomad Series 'The Widerness' Volume 4) which has a delicate balance of life's theme of fragility, emptiness, loneliness, beauty, chance, loss & desperation. Stand-outs/gems/solid tracks include "We Are The Selfish Ones", has magnificent vocals & guitar, "Fairytale", great country-rock track & "Staring Man", has wonderful guitar finger pick-ups & vocals. Great tracks include "Unanswered Letter", with great orchestral base track, melody & vocals, "Idle Tales", "Angels In The Wilderness" with great guitar finger pick-ups, "Damaged From The Start", "I Let Him In", great guitar chords, melody & vocals and "F, I Hate The Cold", a great country-rocking track. An okay track is the jazzy "The Confession Of Georgie E".

On overall, Cowboy Junkies deliver a great well crafted new CD release in 'Wilderness', a highly recommended CD listening.

For any music group to announce that they are going to release a series of 4 albums over a course of 18 months is nothing short of an ambitious project. Most groups would not attempt such a feat. Except if the music group is Cowboy Junkies. With their recent release of "The Wilderness", volumn 4 of their Nomad Series, they almost completed releasing all four albums within the 18 month period they originally announced. It actually ended up taking them 21 months to complete and release all four volumns but hey! Knowing what an undertaking the project was I think we can cut them a little slack if it took an extra three months to complete it.

Cowboy Junkies have always been I felt a group that was constantly changing their sound from one album to the next. In their 25+ years together their sound has evolved from being alternative country to being much more alternative rock. And yet it really is hard to clearly define just what their sound is since they blend so many different styles of music together. Certainly all four albums in the Nomad series are very different from each other and that is what makes the Nomad series so interesting to listen too.

"The Wilderness" brings a wide variety of sound and meaning to each song on the play list. All of the songs on the album were written by Michael Timmins and as with all their previous albums this just shows just how rich and deep a songwriter Michael. I have mentioned before in previous reviews I have written about CJ albums that Michael Timmins doesn't write songs so much as he writes stories that is set to music. The songs deal with issues from relationships to love to problems of everyday living to dealing with cold weather (more on that in a minute). Of course what also makes these songs so good is the wonderful voice of Margo Timmins. She has one of the most underrated voices in music today. She brings such depth and meaning to Michael's words that help to bring his songs to life.

These are not songs looking to make the top 40 play list anywhere. Cowboy Junkies have never been about that whether with their songs or their albums. They look to simply write and observe about life as we all have to live it and the issues and situations all of us have to face at some point in our lives. The most interesting thing about these song is that while they appear on the last volumn of this series they were in fact the first songs Michael had written. They were written around 2007 to 2008 not too long before Michael, his wife and their two daughters left to spend six months living in China. It was during that six months while living there that Michael came up with the inspiration for the songs that would end up on "Renmin Park" the first volumn in the Nomad Series. It later became clear to Timmins as the group began working on the 4 volumns that these songs were destine to become part of the Nomad series.
That doesn't mean there are not any good songs on here because there are. Some of the better tracks that I like are "Unanswered Letter (for JB)", "We Are The Selfish Ones" and "The Confession Of Georgie E". And then there is the last track on "The Wilderness" which has become my favorite. At the same time it also is my least favorite song title. The title is, with modification here, "(f-bomb), I Hate The Cold". The song itself is great and anyone who has ever lived in places where it gets very cold and snows I am sure will identify with this song wholeheartely. I live in Florida and don't have to deal with such things but I still love the song. I bet coming from Canada that Cowboy Junkies loved recording this song out of all the songs they did during the Nomad series. It is I think the most fun and enjoyable song by CJ I have heard since "I Saw Your Shoes" from their "Rarities,B-Sides and Slow,Sad Waltzes" album. I am no prude but I just wish they had used another word for the title.

This is not the best album I think in their series (volumn 2 "Demons" is I think the best) but "The Wilderness" is still a strong album and one that serious devotees of the group will need to get. As for the more casual fans of CJ this is still an album that I highly recommend. It is a great ending to a great series of albums.

Why do I keep returning to the Junkie's first two albums even though this band consistently releases high quality music? I think the answer is that both those first records have lots of space and echo. The "Trinity Session" does so with a blues emphasis and the "Caution Horses" does so with a more country feel but both albums are delicate and spacey. That brings me to this new "Wilderness" album. It also has that space or even a mysteriously spooky quality about it. Whether its a mandolin trickle, or a couple of seconds of silent anticipation or a moment to hear Margo's voice soar or the lyrical honesty of "###, I Hate the Cold"; this album is mellow but intensely so. Bob Dylan said "just because you can play alot of notes doesn't mean you should play more than one or two sometimes." I think this volume of the nomad series is further proof of that principle and it is a classic. I will now look deeper into the nomad series and I think volume two will also have me quietly on the edge of my sofa and reaching for the volume to crank. Vic Chestnut's music was also full of quiet power and pain and I'm sure the Cowboy Junkies have maintained that spirit in volume two of the Nomad series. Rock on or should I say whisper on Cowboy Junkies. We fans await your baited breath.