The new Cowboy Junkies CD is called
\nOpen<\/i>. Someone should have left it closed.<\/p>\n
Don’t get me wrong, I like the Cowboy Junkies. I really do.
\nThe Trinity Session<\/i> and
\nMiles From Our Home<\/i> are some of my favorite mood music;
\nthere are just certain times when I want something slow, dark, and
\na little odd, and the Junkies are perfect for that. But in every
\nband’s life, a time comes when they sacrifice listenability for
\nalleged art, and I’m afraid that
\nOpen<\/i> is a prime example for that. Too much atmosphere, too
\nlittle clarity, and above all too much feedback.<\/p>\n
Some things haven’t changed. Lead vocalist Margo Timmins’ voice
\nis still rich and expressive, ambient and atmospheric. Michael
\nTimmins still plays a mean guitar, though on
\nOpen<\/i> it’s overly distorted, processed, and effects-laden.
\nThe songs are still musically complex and challenging.<\/p>\n
But oh, the production. The bad, bad, bad production. Sometimes
\nMargo’s voice is so far drowning in background crap and guitar
\neffects you want to throw her a life preserver. The spare, clean
\nsound of the band’s past recordings is so far cast away you want to
\ngive it a volleyball to talk to. Despite being the Daily Vault’s
\nresident Production Junkie, it’s not very often that it’s the worst
\nthing on a CD.
\nOpen<\/i> gets that dubious honor. While I’m positive the various
\ndistortions were chosen for some artistic reason, what their
\ncumulative effect is is not art, but mud – thick, nasty, gluey mud
\nthat keeps this CD from ever flying.<\/p>\n
The songs on
\nOpen<\/i> aren’t bad; some of them are downright good, in fact.
\n“Thousand Year Prayer” is plain and simply arranged, so it works
\nand works well. “Bread And Wine” has some neat turns of phrase in
\nit (“And there’s a line in my head from an old gospel song \/ But no
\nmatter how I try, the words come out wrong”).<\/p>\n
Fundamentally, however,
\nOpen<\/i> really has very little to recommend it save for
\nhardcore Cowboy Junkies fans. While there may have been a reason
\nfor the production techniques Michael Timmins used, I would say
\nnext time to remember to keep it simpler than this. As it stands,
\nOpen<\/i> isn’t very open to a clear, listenable sound at
\nall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":25879,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5889],"rating":[11205],"class_list":["post-37085","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-cowboy-junkies","rating-rating-d-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37085"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37085"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}