Cowboy Junkies - The Trinity Session

8.5 - Canada - 1988

A "live" album recorded, like Pink Floyd's Live At Pompeii, without a studio audience but in a Toronto church and not a Roman ruin. Famously made with just a single (albeit stereo) microphone, the recording must have involved a tour de force of musician placement to get all the levels right. Tracks include a handful of originals as well as interesting assortment of covers, including a spectacular reworking of "Blue Moon" in "Blue Moon Revisited (Song for Elvis)" (clearly, a heartfelt tribute to DJ Elvis). The Junkies also offer up one of the best covers of the Velvet Underground's "Sweet Jane" that begins in media res and includes the middle-eight excised from the original version of the track.  In places, the languid pacing of the music threatens to doze off into a state of formless soporifism as Margo Timmins' whispered vocals have a lullaby effect on the listener, but you couldn't ask for a more beautiful sleep aid.