Pitchfork

Even 20 years after its release, the main appeal of The Trinity Sessions, the Cowboy Junkies' second album, remains its lo-fi sound. The ambient buzz of Toronto's Church of the Holy Trinity, where the Junkies recorded the album around one microphone, colors every song, reinforcing the live setting and generating vinyl intimacy even on CD. It's as if the church itself was an instrument, one that Junkies could play pretty well. It allows Margo Timmins' voice to fill your field of vision, simultaneously soothing and unsettling, while her brother Michael's guitar rumbles through the songs, a little louder and sharper than anticipated. In 1988, The Trinity Sessions sounded old but felt new, a sensation amplified by the liberties they took with cover songs. The Junkies brought out the danger of Hank Williams' "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" and Patsy Cline's "Walking After Midnight", which echo each other creepily. They rewrote "Blue Moon" as a paean to Elvis, and their slowed-down "Sweet Jane", endorsed by Lou Reed himself, remains one of the best Velvet Underground covers put to tape.

Two decades later, instead of releasing the expected 2xCD special edition with dry liner notes arguing for the band's impact on, say, the next decade's alt-country movement, the Junkies came up with a different way to celebrate the anniversary of their breakthrough. The band, whose line-up hasn't changed since then, returned to the Church of the Holy Trinity and re-recorded The Trinity Sessions song by song. There were rules, of course. To capture the loose spirit of the originals, they held few rehearsals, allowed themselves only one day to record, and again played live in the round. On the other hand, they used much more sophisticated equipment; invited Ryan Adams, Vic Chesnutt, Natalie Merchant, and multi-instrumentalist Jeff Bird to play along; and had the performance filmed.

The performance has been released on CD/DVD as Trinity Revisited, and it is certainly an odd product-- redundant to anyone familiar with The Trinity Sessions and unconvincing to everyone else. This isn't a reinterpretation, but a re-enactment. The Junkies run through songs almost note for note, and when they go off-script, as on the overly dramatic reading of "Sweet Jane", they display only their limitations. The Junkies don't really jam, nor do they do noise very well. Thank God for Vic Chesnutt, whose idiosyncratic phrasing and ghostly moans add new twists to "Blue Moon Revisited" and "Postcard Blues", as if he's been singing along to them for years. Ryan "Bedhead" Adams fares nearly as well, turning "200 More Miles" into a rolling trucker's anthem. Unfortunately, Natalie Merchant's presence, as always, is overly somber, especially on "Misguided Angel". At no point in her career has she ever mustered the sexuality needed to convey the song's conflicted desires.

What is perhaps most disappointing is that the gentle irreverence of the original, which had the temerity to take liberties with traditional blues and country, has been commemorated with such a respectful performance. Covering their own originals or covering themselves covering others' songs, the Junkies surrender fully to their own history, adding nothing to songs they once proved could always be newly reimagined. Amid all the back-patting, the lo-fi sound that so distinguished The Trinity Sessions is lost completely, and the church becomes nothing more than a pretty backdrop. The worst I can say for Trinity Revisited is that it sounds utterly placeless; the best I can say is that it made me dig out my old copy of The Trinity Sessions and give it another spin.