JUNKIES of the Cowboy Junkies will recall an earlier compilation, Studio, Selected Studio Recordings 1986-1995, initially an import-only release in 1986. Nine of its 14 tracks re-appear among the 17 here on a retrospective with a narrower focus, taking in only the years from 1988's landmark church recording Trinity Sessions to 1993's RCA valedictory, Pale Sun, Crescent Moon.
The Junkies are anything but dead and buried: last year the Canadian minimalists notched up album number 11 with Open, so this Best Of misses out entirely on the past nine years of Toronto folk blues.
Those who believe that the rest of the Cowboy Junkies sounds exactly the same as the best of them - slow, nocturnal, quietly menacing, beyond whisky and coffee redemption but too unchanging - will say so what to the lack of update, but hopefully the next Cowboy collection will lasso all their career. Oh, and that weary theory about the Junkies being nothing more than mellifluous magnolia is rot.
Margo and Michael Timmins stealthily work their adult pleasures; why rush seduction when the thrill is in the chase?
Updated: 12:49 Thursday, December 12, 2002
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