Cowboy Junkies - Pale Sun Crescent Moon • CDs • Vinyl Records • LPs • Music Albums

pickup and a mad dog in the yard" might have been fished from the bottom of a grab bag of country-rock clichés.

The songs that work best buck the formula: On "The Post" (written by Dinosaur Jr's J Mascis), Timmins' vocals have extra body, rippling behind Ken Myhr and Michael Timmins' beautifully bent neopsychedelic guitar lines; and on the bluesy "Hard to Explain," Margo takes a throwaway line ("Love is so hard to explain/It'll make you forget your name") and rubs so much vinegar into it that it burns. That's the kind of quick-and-dirty approach you need to take if you're going to sing about tough guys with scalps hanging from their belts ("Pale Sun") or turn a cup of tea into a metaphor for love ("Cold Tea Blues"). Most of the time, Cowboy Junkies' mix of tough and tender just sounds overboiled – not cowboys, not junkies. (RS 677)

STEPHANIE ZACHAREK