Cowboy Junkies: Early 21st Century Blues

(Herald rating: * *)

It starts with what sounds like singer Margo Timmins coming down with an attack of the giggles. But that's the last cheery note on the 12th album proper from the soporific country-rock outfit who have never really been able to match their 1988 breakthrough The Trinity Sessions, though they've sustained a career since.

With its tracklisting of covers and two originals, this one attempts to deliver an anti-war concept album. But between the opener of Bob Dylan's Licence to Kill and a cheerless version of U2's One as a finale, it sounds like an album that's not so much protesting about the state of the world as grumbling about the power being cut off.

Timmins and band sound most at home on Two Soldiers and the lament No More. But on Bruce Springsteen's You're Missing and Brothers Under the Bridge and George Harrison's Isn't It A Pity something gets lost in the translation. And attempting to do hip-hop things to a Cowboy Junkies song, let alone a cover of John Lennon's I Don't Want to Be A Soldier isn't the brightest idea on an album preciously short of them. But as that track stretches out to seven-plus minutes you do start to understand what Timmins was chortling about at the beginning.

Label: Cooking Vinyl