The Caution Horses

The Trinity Session On their sophomore effort, Canada's Cowboy Junkies manage to make a one-day recording session in an old church one of their most satisfying listens. Featuring the sultry voice of Margo Timmins, the precise musicianship of her brothers Peter (on drums) and Michael (on guitar), and...	Lay It Down In 1996 the Cowboy Junkies could have gone one of two ways: they could have veered away from their familiar melancholic, somber sound or dug deeper into the groove. They chose the latter. Margo Timmins's distinctively sleepy, seductive vocals never sounded better--here she perfec...	Black Eyed Man Black Eyed Man, an album that sounds like an aural facsimile of the parched earth in dead-heat summer, keeps the Cowboy Junkies' quiet, lonesome pop integrity intact. Michael Timmins's guitar threatens to cut loose from the band's low-key mooring, and "Oregon Hill" presents a tou...	Pale Sun, Crescent Moon The Cowboy Junkies' Michael Timmins is a most literary songwriter. On the Toronto quartet's Pale Sun Crescent Moon, Timmins imbeds lines from William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom into the song "First Recollection" and a line from Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "The General in His Labyri...	Open By this stage in the Cowboy Junkies' career, surprises are few and far between and 2001's Open is no different. The dreamy Toronto quartet remains on a slow boil, torn between Margo Timmins's somnambulant singing and brother Michael's ragged bolts of guitar. As usual, nothing sou...
At the End of Paths Taken The Cowboy Junkies' gothic Americana takes a psychedelic hue on At the End of Paths Taken, replete with Beatlesque string sections and snarling, distorted guitar leads. It's an often epic album, exemplified by the opening track, "Brand New World," which starts off like a lament ...	One Soul Now Margo Timmins is one of the more ponderous singers in all of rock. Her elegant, yearning vocals are still soothing listeners into a false sense of security as she downplays human disaster scenarios, trailer park homicides, and anxious couplings on the Cowboy Junkie's tenth studio...	Miles from Our Home On their seventh album, the Cowboy Junkies hitch their pony to producer John Leckie (Radiohead, Verve) and inch closer toward the mainstream. As a result, Miles from Our Home's title track might be the group's most upbeat and infectious song ever. Unfortunately, it also means Mil...	Early 21st Century Blues Nearing the twenty-year mark (their first album, Whites Off Earth Now!!, was released in 1986), Cowboy Junkies have devoted an album to a component that has informed their identity from the beginning: interpreting material written primarily by others. Two of the eleven songs are ...	Trinity Revisited [CD/DVD] Trying to recapture the lightening in a bottle that was the Cowboy Junkies' The Trinity Sessions for its 20th anniversary would have been futile. Instead, the band reconvened in the same Toronto church where that now classic, nearly magical session occurred--this time with a came...

Great alt-country/country rock
The Junkies started their catalog with The Trinity Sessions, an EP of refreshingly slow songs and covers recorded in LA's Trinity Church. Caution Horses' songs are faster but still slow, and feature a melancholy accordion in addition to the usual country instrumentation. This is one of the Junkies' best albums, second only to their third, Black-Eyed Man. The lyrics are tart and sardonic yet delivered in a breathy, flat contralto by the lead singer. This album and the aforementioned Black-Eyed Man are their most distinctive and therefore their best. As they gained experience, the Junkies' began to play faster and faster, losing much of their distinctiveness.

Cowboy Junkies - The Caution Horses
Great CD - I love them already so it was not a difficult sell. The CD was in excellent condition (brand new as promised) and shipping was faster than estimated. All in all great buy.

The Caution Horses
I heard this CD years ago and loved it. I worked in a restaurant & when this CD was played you could see the people eating just getting closer to each other. It sounded just as good as ever!

Imperfect, But Featuring Perfection
The Cowboy Junkies, "The Caution Horses" is a very good, but not fully realized cd. As other reviewers have noted there are a couple of regrettable spots where the lyrics are overwrought and sophmoric. But it is all forgivable in that it is necessary to produce the rest of what is here, which could several times risk being both overwrought and sophmoric, yet rises above and become magnficent. Margo Timmins is vulnerable and lovely and hits all the notes along the way. Two things that must be mentioned. First, Caution Horses is one of the alltime great album titles, but you don't need to buy it to enjoy that. Why you do need to buy it, if you are on the fence is..."Sun Comes Up, It's Tuesday Morning" is one of the best songs you will ever listen to ever. Really. It's that good. If the rest of the album featured me playing Mary Had A Little Lamb, it'd still be worth it. And, great news, they didn't put me on there, just some other pretty good Cowboy Junkies songs. Remember. "Sun Comes Up, It's Tuesday Morning". Brilliant.

Gives country a good name
Firstly, I recommend this album, whether you like country music or if you're a maturing "rocker" looking to expand your repetoire. For years, when people ask me what kind of music I like, my typical response was "anything but country" (yes, even electronic and hiphop). I never knew if the Cowboy Junkies counted as country, but I really like them and figured that they were as close to country music -- the Dwight Yokam, Toby Keith, Dixie Chicks brand of country -- as I could get. I was turned on to the Junkies a bit retroactively through their "Sweet Jane" cover on the _Natural Born Killers_ soundtrack. Unfortunately, the only song on Caution Horses that compares to that cover is "'cause Cheap is How I Feel," an absolutely wonderful song. There are other good ones, but I agree with another reviewer that the album, especially the second half, trails off in terms of quality and "listenability" as it progresses. Overall, the instrumentation -- slow reverb on guitars, harmonicas, mandolins, acordians, and Margo's sultry voice -- is outstanding; but beware, this entire album is SLOW and, might I add, not particularly ideal for roadtrips, unless you're trying to get a baby to sleep or you're driving through someplace like Tokyo at night and feel like being ironic. For me, after about 4-5 songs, I had to pick up the pace with another album.