New music from Cowboy Junkies is something to get excited about and the wonderfully-written ‘Hard to Build. Easy to Break’ meets those high expectations. This is masterful music, incredibly atmospheric and delivered in growing, swelling layers of complexity that you can explore through repeated listening. As ever, the voice of Margo Timmins elevates this into something entirely beautiful.
Songwriter and guitarist Michael Timmins explains: “These days there seems to be this pull towards destruction. I’m more interested in the effort it takes to create something or the experience of seeing something evolve. On the flip-side of that is how easy it is to utterly smash and destroy whatever is at hand. The line, ‘Tend the flame that lit your way // stop worshiping the ash,’ kind of sums it all up for me.” The song was written in 2021 during a particularly uncertain time when the pandemic, divided politics and family challenges were combining to create instability and the sense of things unravelling. Timmins continues: “It was a time of great existential dread when many of the pillars that many of us had been leaning on, for our entire lives, seemed to be crumbling. I was struck by how easy and quickly things can fall apart, if not properly respected.”
This is taken from the forthcoming album ‘Such Ferocious Beauty’, due on 2nd June 2023 (pre-order here). Last year’s covers album ‘Songs of the Recollection’ received critical acclaim but the upcoming record will be the band’s first new material for five years. These new songs are deeply reflective explorations of life, time, ageing and familial loss. Most importantly, these are just compellingly great songs. Check it out.
