COWBOY JUNKIES - DEMONS
(Proper Records)

Initially planned as a collaboration with alt. country artist Vic Chesnutt, this project became something else after Chesnutt took his own life at the end of 2009. So instead, the eleven tracks featured here are all Chesnutt compositions, handled with loving care and fleshed out with Cowboy Junkies’ lush mix of psychedelic folk rock and trippy Americana, and the band mix swirling fuzztone guitars with stripped down acoustic songs that have a tense poignancy.

Chesnutt’s lyric are a dark trip into a troubled soul – Square Room feels like a suicide note set to music – and Margo Timmins’ incredible, emotive renditions of them are eerily seductive. This is pain and torment that is both grandly sweeping and agonisingly intimate.

The ITunes track info lists this as ‘ambient / dream pop’. Sounds like a spot-on description to me. Beautiful and troubled, Demons is a worthy tribute.

DAVID FLINT

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