UP AND AT ‘EM : There’s Still a Kind of Hush to the Cowboy Junkies’ Style, but Their Music Is More Alert

If U2 hadn’t beaten them to it, the Cowboy Junkies could aptly have titled their new album “Wide Awake in America.”

The Canadian band broke through in 1988 with “The Trinity Sessions,” a hypnotic, depths-of-the-night work that managed the neat trick of nodding off with alluring artistry. “The Caution Horses,” its 1990 successor, wasn’t exactly a wake-up call. Like “Trinity,” the music was languid, though frequently less distinctive, with Margo Timmins’ vocal delivery more the stuff of inward dreams and meditations than of outward-directed narrative or declaration.

With “Black Eyed Man,” the Cowboy Junkies have quietly begun to assert themselves in the waking world.

The album ends with a valedictory ballad, “To Live Is to Fly,” that makes explicit the band’s new insistence on alertness:

“To live is to fly, low and high

So shake the dust off of your wings, the sleep out of your eyes.”

Although that song was written by Texas troubadour Townes Van Zandt, the Toronto-based Cowboy Junkies and their main songwriter, Michael Timmins, have taken its message to heart. The album’s 10 Timmins originals display a storyteller’s sharp eye for detail, a sure sign of acuity and wakeful engagement with the world.

Songs such as “Oregon Hill,” “Murder Tonight in the Trailer Park” and “The Last Spike” all create vivid scenes and a well-developed sense of place while also delivering an emotional payoff. The close detailing of a white-trash Dixie neighborhood in “Oregon Hill” becomes especially poignant because it is a mental visitation conjured by a prison inmate who can only dream of returning to his old haunts--except, the song implies, he wants to chance an escape attempt.

“The Last Spike,” like Bruce Springsteen’s “My Hometown,” chronicles the economic desolation of small-town, post-industrial America. In keeping the viewpoint narrowly personal rather than overtly political, it makes an implied (and therefore more effective) protest against the corporate hand’s indifferent exploitation and discarding of resources and lives.

Cowboy Junkies are primarily a family band, with siblings Margo, Michael (who plays guitar) and Peter (the drummer) Timmins joined by bassist Alan Anton. After their 1986 debut album of blues covers, “Whites Off Earth Now!!” they have been augmented in the studio and on tour by a small cadre of other players who typically dab on the country touches that flavor the band’s sound. Joining the Junkies on this tour are Ken Myhr on guitar, Spencer Evans on piano and Jeff Bird on harmonica and mandolin.

Atmosphere was everything on the “Whites” and “Trinity” albums, both of which leaned heavily on covers of classic material (including songs by or associated with John Lee Hooker, Robert Johnson, Lou Reed, Hank Williams and Patsy Cline). “Trinity” made the Junkies famous, winning critical acclaim and selling more than 1 million copies worldwide--not bad for an album recorded live in a Toronto church in one 14-hour session, at a cost of $250. The Junkies got more than their money’s worth with the hall’s striking ambient effect: The musicians sounded as if they were playing huddled and hushed, surrounded by a vast, dark expanse. Margo Timmins sang as if the lyrics were thoughts and feelings lingering half-formed in her mind as she drifted into sleep.

“The Caution Horses” turned toward original material, with inconsistent results. Some songs were held back by stock images, but the record had too much going for it to be dismissed as a post-stardom choke. “Sun Comes Up, It’s Tuesday Morning” captured the sadness and liberation in a romantic breakup. “Thirty Summers” was one of those small songs (about a husband’s lingering depression and its impact on his wife) that resonates with implications that evoke a much larger story. The Junkies also applied their edge-of-sleep method to Neil Young’s rocker “Powderfinger.” The drastic reworking worked, underlining the regret and ghostliness in Young’s portrayal of a death-by-shooting. For some reason, though, the Junkies saw fit to alter and diminish one of rock’s greatest death scenes: instead of singing, “Then I saw black, and my face splashed in the sky,” Margo Timmins substituted the weak “flashed” for the vivid, understatedly shocking “splashed.”

On “Black Eyed Man,” the Junkies’ beautiful singer makes the transition with her songwriting brother to more detailed and varied work. Going beyond the hypnotic murmur that has characterized her singing before, Timmins has found, in her own quiet way, the means to shade her singing with dramatic or wryly funny touches that are fully sensitive to the stories and emotions in the Cowboy Junkies’ songs.

A sensation four years ago for their mastery at mood-weaving, the Junkies are showing now that they are wide awake and up to the more demanding challenges of spinning a good yarn.

Who: Cowboy Junkies.

When: Wednesday, May 6, at 8 p.m.; Thursday, May 7, at 8 and 10:30 p.m.

Where: The Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano.

Whereabouts: San Diego Freeway to the San Juan Creek Road exit. Left onto Camino Capistrano. The Coach House is in the Esplanade Plaza.

Wherewithal: $28.50.

Where to call: (714) 496-8930.