Cowboy Junkies: Songs of the Recollection (Proper Records, digital outlets)

When Canada’s Cowboy Junkies broke through with The Trinity Sessions in 1987, they whispered their way to attention as grunge was making its noisy way into ears.

The album, recorded quietly in a church, included their cover of Lou Reed’s Sweet Jane and in the decades since they’ve continued to pepper in covers.

Prior to The Trinity Sessions, their abrasive debut album Whites Off Earth Now!! was mostly old blues and moody Springsteen. That musical breadth – from blues and metal edge rock to lap steel country – informs Songs of the Recollection which gathers up many of their previous, less familiar covers and four new ones.

Although Margo Timmins’ weary style doesn’t serve Bowie’s desperate Five Years well, they’re at home on the Stones’ No Expectations, a swirling take on Gram Parsons’ Ooh Las Vegas and an eerie country reinvention of the Cure’s Seventeen Seconds.

Because of their unusual choices – songs by Vic Chestnutt, recent Bob Dylan and Gordon Lightfoot, two from Neil Young – this is more bewitching than most covers albums which have surfaced recently.

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You can hear this album at Spotify here.