Zoe Records
2007
At The End Of Paths Taken
About This Album
Michael Timmins, chief songwriter and producer/arranger of the Cowboy Junkies, has always written "relationship" songs, though not in the general sense of the word. Timmins has never been satisfied with easy answers. And in the languid, slow, cough syrup delivery of sister Margo to express them, and the band to underscore that performance, he's never had to settle. The music has always gone down gently, though the lyrics to these terse melodies have been complex, often ambivalent or riddled with seemingly paradoxical meanings. On At the End of Paths Taken, he brings his notion of relationship to its bravest and most unflinching examination yet: the family. Timmins has written a set of songs that reflect the complex, frustrating, edifying, and conflict-ridden web of relationships that constitute the family, from nuclear to extended to global. He is a parent, and a son with aging parents. He plays with his siblings in the Cowboy Junkies. He's as much of an expert on the subject as, say, Robert Coles, though in a different way. He has also extended his musical reach here, with songwriting help from bassist Alan Anton on three tunes, and the lyric inspiration of poems by Philip Larkin, Seamus Heaney and novelist Joan Didion on others.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 and 8)

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