2023-07-30 14:32:12
A beauty so ferocious… It is that of existence, sumptuous and violent, magnificently celebrated by Cowboy Junkies in their latest album “Such Ferocious Beauty” (Cooking Vinyl/Sony). To embody this irrepressible strength and beauty in music, the Canadian group formed in 1985 has composed ten songs as out of time. Bewitching voices and electrifying guitars weave a whole of symphonic breadth, with a masterfully clean sound in the blueprint.
What I Lost, a great song that tears the soul
Cowboy Junkies reconciles the expertise of folk veterans and the renewal of their inspiration. The line-up has remained the same as when they started nearly forty years ago: siblings, Margo Timmins on vocals, Michael Timmins, the composer, on guitar, Peter Timmins, on drums, and their childhood friend Alan Anton, on bass and piano. An audible artistic coherence throughout the story told by “Such Ferocious Beauty”, an old-style album that is best listened to in order.
A reflection that has come over time, unfolds in ten stages, meditative and stimulating, with an unchanged style. quivering ballad, What I Lost, has the simplicity and the obviousness of the great songs that tear the soul, as in the past Both Sides Now by Joni Mitchell. Supported by a virtuoso violinist, James McKie, and opening the album, she recounts existence, what we retain and what we lose. Between oblivion and dreams, this composition inspired by the end of life of the father of the Timmins when his memories were fading, forms a hypnotic lament whose soundtrack is constantly enriched.
Staying on this artistic crest line, the album, illustrated with butterflies in changing colors, draws its inspiration from the forces of nature at work in everyone and in the world. The floods (with the title Flood) and the dramatic forest fires ravaging Canada find their place there, with the impressive composition Hell is Real, apocalypse in progress, of which Margo Timmins makes herself the prophet. “I am scared and empty/ Jesus is coming ready or not/ Hell is real, Hell is hot”. (“I’m terrified and empty / Jesus is coming whether you’re ready or not / Hell is real, hell is burning”). But we also hear for more than a minute the song of crickets in a calm summer night, like an invigorating promise.
The Odyssey, Mike Tyson et DH Lawrence pour inspiration
The Canadian quartet demonstrates the lyricism of a Neil Young in several titles, including the melodious Circe and Penelope who sings a sorority from the Odyssey through the friendship of the two lovers of Ulysses; we still in Mike Tyson (Here It Comes)evoking the shock when the first direct falls in the jaws of a boxer or when life’s unexpected blows rain down.
DH Lawrence and his poem Shadows (“the shadows”) directly inspired the elegy Shadows 2. An efficient tube, Hard to Build. Easy to Break (“hard to build, easy to break”)brings its punch to the whole which ends in front of the horizon with the title Blue Skies. From loss to hope, Cowboy Junkies has made an overview of human emotions and folk atmospheres, at the peak of its art.
#Cowboy #Junkies #folk #splendor