Cowboy Junkies: Miles From Our Home

Toronto's Cowboy Junkies has done a lot within the narrow spectrum of soft, languid music. From 1988's spare, impossibly beautiful The Trinity Session to 1996's pop-oriented but no less pleasing Lay It Down, the band has consistently overcome missteps while assembling an excellent catalog. Unfortunately, its seventh studio album, Miles From Our Home, is one of those missteps, a homogenous pop-rock record that's rarely more than pleasant. Unlike Lay It Down's terrific, subtly upbeat single "A Common Disaster," these tracks lack memorable hooks—or even the seething tension that boils beneath the surface of Cowboy Junkies' best material. It's not that tracks like "Darkling Days," "Hollow As A Bone," and the rock-leaning title track don't offer breezy, listenable charms, but Miles From Our Home is an album without highs or lows, just 10 or 11 bits of dishearteningly middling pop-rock wallpaper.