The Barenaked Ladies, they are not, despite hailing from the same hometown of Toronto, Ontario. But Canadian kinship aside, the two groups could not possibly be more polar-opposite. The Ladies bring cocaine to the rave. Their seventh album, Miles From Our Home , finds the Cowboy Junkies mining familiar thematic terrain, albeit with some subtle but notably atypical sonic embellishments. A work thoroughly drenched in melancholy introspection, it nonetheless succeeds in never quite crossing over into maudlin morbidity.
Life is loss, it seems to say.
But so long as there is life, then all is not lost.