All we are saying

This was originally written five years ago. Nothing's changed. It's getting worse. Time for a reminder. You can stream and, more important, buy this record at http://latentrecordings.com/cowboyjunkies/music/

EARLY 21st CENTURY BLUES - COWBOY JUNKIES

"Time to kill our children and sing about it". It's a lyric that shocked some American record buyers, made concert audiences distinctly uncomfortable and has even provoked heated arguments among the group’s hardcore following. But it's a line that songwriter Michael Timmins, of Cowboy Junkies, is rightly proud of. It comes from "December Skies", one of two originals on the band's new record, "Early 21st Century Blues", an album that is as passionately, intelligently and eloquently anti-war in its intent as anything rock music has come up with in 50 years of trying.

It's also a timely reminder that music really can make a difference a belief which, shockingly, disappeared almost immediately after its high water mark, Live Aid. There's been little protest in the last 20 years as musicians, like the rest of us, have stopped paying attention, offering little rebuke to a world where wars continue to be fought, often in our name, the multinational conglomerates that simultaneously bankroll rock stars while producing weapons preferring that conspiracy of silence.

Reflecting on a song inspired in part by Timothy Findley's novel "The Wars", Michael explains, "It's really about our attitude to war, the way we glorify it, make it seem a noble calling in some way. We celebrate the fighting, the glorious dead and we make it seem that death on the battlefield is something to aspire to. If we concentrated on the human cost of those deaths, the lives that are broken by it, maybe we wouldn't rush to war so easily."

Bassist Alan Anton is blunter about a song that opens with bodies falling from September Skies. "The day after 9/11, in Washington you had Congressmen standing outside the Capitol Building singing the national anthem and "God Bless America", then sending those kids off to war just a few weeks later – for me, that’s killing their own children and singing about it."

"December Skies" has all the trademarks that have made Cowboy Junkies the most subtle yet most emotionally arresting band of the last 20 years, a group that uses nuance not bombast to make its point and which has a more provocative and lasting impact for it, asking questions not declaiming answers from on high. Stately in pace - "It's not depressing, it's just slow" laughs Michael - his piercing lyric is given its full weight by the gorgeous, langorous delivery of sister Margo, one of three Timmins siblings in the core line-up, younger brother Pete completing the band on drums.

Fully behind the sentiments expressed by her brother, Margo admits it was still a hard lyric to sing. "I have a two year old son and as a mom, whatever the context, it's still a very shocking line. I struggled with it for a time before I found a way into it, but that's ok, that's my job! It was important that I did sing it because I'm very supportive of what Michael is writing about. He's expressing the way that we all feel in the band, that there have to be alternatives to war and that we should all do more to make our voices heard."

The apathy that surrounds the political process is a source of real frustration for Michael for whom it is becoming a recurring lyrical theme. "The title track from our last album, "One Soul Now", was very much about the fact that I feel these are among the worst times of recent history, that things are falling apart around us yet people aren't taking any notice - we felt that as we toured the US last year before the election, so many people were just paying no attention. We need to come together as people, we need to work for change together. That was why we had "One" as the last song on the new album and why we end our live show with it at the moment. I'm not a huge U2 fan but the line "We've got to carry each other, One" pretty much summed up the record."

It’s not hard to see why supporters of the Bush administration might find “December Skies” so unpalatable given the hysterical level that their “my country right or wrong” jingoism reached in the run-up to the Presidential election last November, but it seems that elements of the Junkies core audience is having trouble with it, misreading it just as US audiences missed the point of Springsteen's "Born In The USA" 20 years ago. On the Junkies' June tour of north-east America - pointedly dubbed the United States of Canada Blue States Tour within the band - crowds often shuffled uneasily as Margo Timmins’ rich, gentle vocal unleashed the harshest of lyrics. That wasn't lost on Michael, whose reaction was simple. "Great! If they're uncomfortable with it, they're being forced to think and people don't do that enough. We let things go too easily."

"Early 21st Century Blues" puts Michael's two original compositions amid the greats in the pantheon of protest songwriters - Dylan, Havens, Springsteen, Lennon - and it underlines his maturity as a writer that neither song suffers by comparison. It also illustrates his willingness to let the Junkies look outward when the need arises, a departure from the past where he was largely focused on the politics of relationships. Yet the new album does see a partial return to the almost mythical sound of "the Trinity Session", their breathtaking breakthrough from 1988 that catapulted them to international success, recapturing those textures and tensions through beautifully understated playing, the glorious arrival of Margo's voice on "Handouts In The Rain" as beautiful a moment as anything you'll hear this year.

In hindsight, the "live to two track" recording of nearly two decades ago could not have been made in better surroundings than the Church of the Holy Trinity. Today, it's almost completely enclosed by towering shopping malls, much like Cowboy Junkies themselves, a band producing heartfelt music of the spirit in a marketplace that would rather pedal fear than sell hope. The Church is home to projects helping Toronto's homeless and is festooned with banners demanding "Social Justice Now!" It's a call that the Junkies back wholeheartedly, not least with this record.

Michael cites Dylan as his greatest songwriting influence, but "Early 21st Century Blues" treads more in Lennon's footsteps, an urgent reaction to the US election and the continuing slaughter in the Middle East, reminiscent of the "Some Time In New York City" concept. But unlike Lennon, Cowboy Junkies haven't sacrificed quality for speed and the insidious nature of their nuanced music could have greater lasting significance than the sledgehammer approach the former Beatle often employed.

Often misunderstood or written off as purveyors of melancholy, Cowboy Junkies have long offered the most hopeful music around, music that accepts the trials and tribulations of life but which gets you through to the next day with its warmth, its humanity. It's a music that takes its responsibilities seriously and which offers solace to those most in need including, ironically, US soldiers fighting in Iraq who have written to the band in numbers to thank them for the music they listen to at the toughest of times.

Those soldiers have become the forgotten men in the political elite's determination to desensitise us to their machinations, a project that seems to be working. It's as if we think all the battles were won after the Civil Rights struggle, Vietnam, Rock Against Racism and the like. We've fallen asleep in our post Cold War material comforts. But racism? Still there. Civil rights issues? Still there. Vietnam? Moved to Afghanistan, but it's still there. The need for dissent? Still there, more than ever.

Cowboy Junkies are not singing about killing our children, they're singing about saving them and thousands like them.

War is over. If you want it...