Album Review - Cowboy Junkies - At the End of Paths Taken
By Jason Lent
The flow of time has quickened, or so it seems. Two decades have
passed since Cowboy Junkies emerged from a church in Toronto with The
Trinity Session, an essential album in the lo-fi indie canon. Over its
first 10 years, the band turned out alt-country music that was steeped
in the narrative influence of southern gothic writers like Flannery
O'Connor. Unwaveringly consistent in depth, though sometimes limited
in breadth, the ensemble finished its first decade together by
releasing what had been its strongest album to date: 1996's Lay It Down.
Recorded on the heels of personal loss, the 1998 effort Miles from Our
Home found Cowboy Junkies taking its first steps down a more intimate
path, on which it ruminated upon the uncertainty of, well, everything.
With each passing album, the writer and the story slowly were becoming
one. For those who hung around, the past decade provided more personal
introspection and musical exploration. The culmination of its journey
is its latest effort At the End of Paths Taken, and it indisputably is
a career-topping masterpiece.
At the End of Paths Taken examines the quest for happiness in a
contingent world that is always changing, where everything you love
can and will be taken away. The concept of family provides a framework
for this exploration, much like Gabriel Garcia Marquez wove family
history into One Hundred Years of Solitude to create a piece of art
that bridges the internal world of our own personal relation****ps with
the often unbearable landscape that serves as our stage.
This is an excerpt. To read the complete review, please visit:
http://www.musicbox-online.com/reviews-2007/cowboyjunkies-attheendofpathstaken.html
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