After 25 years in the business, Cowboy Junkies could be forgiven for taking things easy. Perhaps an album release every once in and while just to keeps things ticking over or maybe a few gigs just to pay off the family bills. Thankfully, this long running Canadian band are having none of this. Despite, or more likely because of, the fact that they currently find themselves without a fixed record deal, they show no signs of slowing down or going through the motions.
On the contrary, this release is the first of four volumes planned over the next 18 months (up to November 2011) , an ambitious project which the band have embarked upon to prove to themselves that they have lost none of their energy and enthusiasm.
Each volume is to have a different theme and will feature elegant sleeves of Nomad paintings by Cuban-American artist Enrique Martinez Celaya. It has already been decided that Volume 2 in the series will be called Demons and feature covers of the late Vic Chesnutt. A mouth watering prospect.
Renmin Park takes its title from "People's Parks" to be found throughout China, and, more specifically, celebrates the sights, sounds, and characters of Jingjiang. This is a town situated on the Yangtze River, about two hours from Shanghai, where Junkies' song writer Michael Timmins recently stayed, having been invited to take their two adopted Chinese daughters back to the land of their birth.It is an experience he describes as "other-worldly" and the album is a kind of musical diary of his impressions with many tracks making creative use of field recordings made during his three month stay.
It was originally conceived as a song cycle using the metaphor of an ill fated couple - one Chinese, one foreigner - to tell the story of a culture as seen through the eyes of outsiders. Although this idea was later shelved, the title track - versions of which open and close the album - focuses on these two imagined lovers as they make clandestine plans to meet.
On first hearing, this record has a curiously disorientating quality. The title track and the song I Cannot Sit Sadly By Your Side are immediately striking but for the most part the effect is (quite deliberately, I suspect) that of being a stranger in a strange town. What , for example , is the casual listener to make of the song whose title - Sir Francis Bacon At The Net - is every bit as curious as the content?
In order to get your bearings, Michael Timmins's blog entries, to be found on the band's revamped website, are indispensable. From these we learn, for instance, that the sounds at the beginning of the Bacon track are voices recorded from an early morning badminton game and that the poetic language (e.g. "Bleaching bones of their crimes tangling") is an attempt to get a handle on the ambiguities surrounding Mao's legacy. In other words the complexity and otherness of the piece reflects the many contradictions of the country's troubled past ("a land that loves its villains"). The song closes with a Bacon quote "that which was certain will now end in doubt" with the ironic caveat "another piece of advice not taken".
Two songs have been freely translated from Mandarin - Xu Wei's My Fall and, the aforementioned I Cannot Sit Sadly By Your Side by Zuoxiao Zuzhou (ZXZZ) . The composers of these songs are local musicians Michael Timmins met after a local music fanatic (Eric Chen) introduced him to a small, but thriving, underground scene in Jingjiang .
The latter is the album's stand out track, a tale of dark deeds which opens with the chilling opening lines : "You threw away the gun - did I tell you what's to be done - I need it to kill just one". This is the kind sad slow waltz that perfectly showcases the cool and classy vocals of Margo Timmins and highlights all that is great about the Cowboy Junkies sound.
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We leap from the sublime to the ridiculous when ZXZZ, the writer of this song , appears in person, singing A Walk In The Park in warbly Chinese that sounds more comical than plaintive. Michael Timmins is realistic enough to acknowledge this track might have even hardcore Junkies fans reaching for the skip button. As with the Francis Bacon tune, it shows that the priority with this record is to give a varied musical snapshot of Timmins' experiences in China rather than to provide a safe, easy listening travelogue.
A tourist visiting the country for pleasure would probably not wish to dwell too long on what Michael Timmins refers to as "the violent nature of Chinese society and inherent contradictions". But it is precisely this kind of observation that helps give his songs a depth and resonance. For instance, field recordings of children's voices add another dimension to the song (You've got to get) A Good Heart , the sentiments of which seem to symbolise the hope that a new generation will be more enlightened and learn from past errors.
At the same time, his fascination for China does not mean he sees the country through rose-tinted spectacles. China's habit of erasing uglier aspects of its chequered history is addressed in one song (Cicadas) dedicated to the 'forgotten' victims ("No memory of where we fell") of the Tananmen Square massacre.
On a more personal note, two tracks are closely connected to Michael Timmins experiences of adoption. This is a delicate issue in China, being tied to social problems arising from the state's policies to limit family size. A Few Bags Of Grain tells of the feelings of shame felt by daughters who feel themselves to be worthless, while Little Dark Heart ( "I have no name, I have no one") is full of compassion and sadness for the many abandoned girls consigned to China's orphanages.
The one song that seems obviously out of place is Stranger Here. Unlike the other tracks this has a full electric band sound and, with its southern gothic imagery of a floating body and wrongfully accused man , belongs to a different record. Only the sentiment "I am stranger here" really fits with the rest of the collection.
In summary, this is a flawed but fascinating album. It is one of those records takes several plays to get a handle on and still more to appreciate fully. Requiring, as it does, a certain level of attention and because it makes so few concessions to the mainstream, success from a commercial standpoint is destined to be limited. Artistically speaking, though, Cowboy Junkies fans and serious music lovers alike will rightly herald it as a triumph.
Cowboy Junkies Website
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