Riding Across a Wide Emotional Range

COWBOY JUNKIES

“Pale Sun, Crescent Moon”

RCA

* * * 1/2

With its sunny air and lyrics about the joys of “a cup of coffee and wearing your ring,” “Anniversary Song” may be the brightest pop paean to domestic bliss since John Lennon’s “Double Fantasy” numbers. That contented tone is so strong that it virtually spills over the rest of this Canadian group’s fifth album, largely written by guitarist Michael Timmins and honey-voiced by his sister Margo.

The magic of the Junkies, though, is a concurrent sense of dis contentedness, a kind of buzz evocative of all-night drives across the North American plains, or all-night ponderings of life’s subtleties. That bittersweet balance was already defined with the group’s 1988 breakthrough album, “The Trinity Session,” but here it’s expanded and elaborated on, with a wider range of dynamics both musical (from hypnotic, folkie atmospheres to roiling, rocky blues) and emotional.

In some ways, perhaps, this album veers away from the “Trinity” mysticism in favor of more standard pop tones. But the message seems to be that even a content life is full of mysteries, and these songs are no less poetic for the explicitness and maturity; lyrical quotes from William Faulkner and Gabriel Garcia Marquez are not the least bit out of place.

Yes, this is adult music, largely free of the rage and dysfunction that marks much rock, yet just as compelling through its wealth of complexities, and all the more welcome for it.

New albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).