621. Cowboy Junkies - Trinity Session (1988)

















Track Listing

1. Mining for Gold
2. Misguided Angel
3. Blue Moon Revisited (Song for Elvis)
4. I Don't Get It
5. I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry
6. To Love Is to Bury
7. 200 More Miles
8. Dreaming My Dreams With You
9. Working on a Building
10. Sweet Jane
11. Postcard Blues
12. Walkin' After Midnight

Review

It's all in the band's name really. Think of Country music, now think of it played by some extremely narcotised people who see the world at a snail's pace. What you end up getting is a really great album, that would make the most ardent Country music hater into a lover.

The Trinity Session was recorded on a budget that would make a shoestring look like diamond encrusted platinum, and still it manages to be an extremely effective and affecting album. The influences are all quite patent here, Hank Williams and Velvet Underground, such a strange mix that ends up sounding like the most sweltering night in summer.

The singing is perfect, sometimes so languid that you can't understand the words, it fits the mood perfectly, and there is a live feeling to the whole thing without any of the distracting clapping and stuff, they are playing just to one microphone though, which makes it all the more amazing that it sounds so good. I love this.

Track Highlights

1. Sweet Jane
2. 200 Miles
3. I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry
4. Blue Moon Revisited (Song For Elvis)

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The band was unable to rehearse with most of the guest musicians before the day of the session. Considering the method of recording and time constraints, this could have been disastrous for the numbers which required seven or more musicians, but after paying a security guard twenty five dollars for an extra two hours, the band was able to finish, and even recorded the final song of the session, "Misguided Angel", in a single take.

Contrary to popular myth, the album was not entirely recorded in one day. In the hustle of the first recording session, the band forgot to record "Mining for Gold". Margo and Moore recorded the song a few days later during the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's lunch break.

Sweet Jane: