Cowboy Junkies - Sing In My Meadows: The Nomad Series, Volume 3

Cowboy Junkies - Sing In My Meadows: The Nomad Series, Volume 3

2011, Razor & Tie/Latent Recordings

Canadian mellow-rock mavens the Cowboy Junkies offer up a different sound beginning on October 25, 2011, with the release of Sing In My Meadows, the third release in The Nomad Series. Going well off the beaten path of their past works, Cowboy Junkies venture into a world of low-fi, fuzzy electric blues and folk. The result is their most compelling album since The Trinity Sessions, full of the bluesy, breathy alto of Margo Timmins, minimalist arrangements and a lot of distortion. The bare bones approach to song construction allows for stark contrasts between Michael Timmins' fuzzy guitar work and sister Margo's unforgettable voice.

Breaking out with "Continental Drift", the band spends the first two minutes exploring the open spaces in the arrangement sans vocals before Margo Timmins slips in the back door with an icy, metallic vocal line that's both warm and cold at the same time. The blues influences come fully to the fore on "Sing In My Meadows", a dark and conflicted invitation that's both beautiful and disturbing at once. "Hunted" is perhaps the most wide-open song on the album, allow room for Margo Timmins to rant and wail and show a much more carnal vocal character than fans might be used to. The closer, "I Move On", sounds more like Chrissie Hynde jamming with Junkhouse than anything you might expect from Cowboy Junkies.

Sing In My Meadows has its ups and downs, but is a thoroughly compelling left turn for a band that honed its reputation on a smooth, mellow brand of anti-folk. Sing In My Meadows plays like the band's dark secret, hidden in a closet for all these years and finally let into the light. It's compelling; aboriginal and full of a dark energy that draws you in.

Rating: 3.5 Stars (Out of 5)

Learn more about Cowboy Junkies at www.cowboyjunkies.com or www.myspace.com/cowboykjunkies.  Sing In My Meadows drops on October 25th, 2011 on CD.  The Vinyl edition will follow on November 15, 2011.  Digital versions will be forthcoming through Amazon.com and iTunes, but are not yet available for pre-order.

            CD                     Vinyl

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Book Review: Nick Cave - The Death Of Bunny Munro

Nick Cave - The Death Of Bunny Munro
2009, Faber & Faber

Nick Cave has been singer, songwriter and spiritual leader for The Birthday Party, The Bad Seeds and Grinderman; one wonders why he would even feel the need to write novels. It turns out he's actually pretty good at it. His first book, And The Ass Saw An Angel, debuted in 1989 to rave critical reviews. The Australian-born resident of Brighton returns 20 years later with his sophomore effort, The Death Of Bunny Munro. Bunny Munro is a post-modern Willie Loman with the self-destructive tendencies of Holden Caufield and the hubris of Charlie Harper (Charlie Sheen, Two and a Half Men).

We meet Munro in the midst of his life's work, ripping innocence and self-respect from the female beauty product-buying populace of England with his magnetic eyes and arrogant swagger. Munro goes through ladies trousers like a pig through slop. Munro, however, is on the precipice of a stunning fall from grace. His wife clinically depressed and tired of Bunny’s Philandering, commits suicide in gruesomely deliberate fashion, making it very clear in the process why. Bunny instantly becomes primary caretaker of his son, Bunny Jr., and the great swoon is on. Bunny Munro has always had a predilection for drugs and alcohol, but his consumption increases in direct proportion to the decline of Munro’s judgment and control. He begins to lose his savoir-faire with the ladies and his place in the world. To further it all, it becomes readily apparent that Munro is so immersed himself that he is utterly incapable of taking care of Bunny Jr.

Bunny takes his son on the road to show him the ropes of selling, which for Bunny Jr. amounts to sitting in the family car and waiting for Dad to score and then score. This works well for Bunny until his dead wife starts dropping in on his extra-curricular sessions, as well as showing herself and then visiting Bunny Jr. Hanging over all of this is Bunny’s Dad, ill with terminal cancer and as mean as a junk yard dog on a hunger strike. If you’ve followed all of this thus far, you’ll understand that The Death of Bunny Munro is a mess; A glorious, hilarious mess. Nick Cave has constructed a character so cartoonish he has to be real, and his story-telling style is more like he’s telling you over a beer than writing it down for you to read later.

In the end Munro is a character you hate to like, but there’s a simpering humanity to the man that catches your sympathy. You realize that Munro is, more than anything else, a product of his upbringing. The cancer that is killing his old man isn’t nearly as powerful as the social one he passed on to this son. Bunny Jr. there’s still hope for, and perhaps that is the reason for all of this to occur. Either way, The Death Of Bunny Munro an entertaining story that won’t play well on the Oprah book list but would probably make a wonderful short miniseries for HBO or Cinemax. Nick Cave scores again!

Rating: 4 Stars (Out of 5)

You can learn more about Nick Cave and The Death of Bunny Munro at http://www.thedeathofbunnymunro.com/ or http://www.nick-cave.com/. You can purchase The Death Of Bunny Munro from Amazon.com as a hardcover, an audiobook CD read by Cave or as an audio download.