O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : Cowboy Junkies Come Out of Dark to Brighten Show

Step by gradual step, the Cowboy Junkies continue to come out of the whispering dark of “The Trinity Session,” the hushed and intimate 1988 album that brought the Toronto band fame and acclaim.

If singer Margo Timmins stays on the tack she took Saturday night at the Coach House, brightening the band’s 90-minute early show with many a digression into engaging, low-keyed humor, Cowboy Junkies may yet end up doing an album called “The Comedy Session.”

Taking the capacity crowd into her confidence, Timmins introduced songs with gently beguiling stories based on family lore (the band includes three Timmins siblings, with Peter on drums and Michael the rhythm guitarist and songwriter) and the Junkies’ pre-”Trinity” scuffling days on the road.

Back then, Margo recalled with a chuckle, they would play deserted bars where “the cash register and the pinball machine and any slightest little noise was way louder than we were.”

That is hardly the case now. Besides turning into a shy-but-overcoming-it between-songs raconteur, Timmins has developed into a much more forceful and confident singer. She was regularly able to put enough heft in her delivery to cut through a five-man instrumental attack that was controlled but credible enough to make you think Cowboy Junkies could be a pretty good psychedelic band if so inclined.

Timmins smiled frequently and fetchingly, conveying a sincere pleasure in singing, and created some visual interest with her understated, languidly wafting movements. Timmins still has no idea what to do with her hands, though, which cost her some expressive possibilities. When not wrapping her arms around herself protectively, she would be clutching her microphone stand with two fists, as if it were a pole in a lurching subway car.

The Junkies--scheduled to play again Sunday at the Coach House and Tuesday at the Palace in Hollywood--drew five of the set’s 16 songs from the solid new album, “Pale Sun, Crescent Moon.” They also performed two or three numbers from each of their four previous releases.

(Not included was “First Recollection,” a song from the new album that would have had eerie resonance in the aftermath of Kurt Cobain’s death: “I’ve sat and watched my troubles pile through the summer,/Now I’m sitting, hearing my youngest cry down the hall./Winter’s coming on, days getting dreary,/And I’m thinking this is the season that I leave you all.”)

Not everything worked. Several songs that on record succeed on the strength of detailed and evocative character sketches wrought by Michael Timmins sounded static on stage due to musical sparseness and too-even dynamics. Among them were “Sun Comes Up, It’s Tuesday Morning,” and “Pale Sun,” which made for a lull in the set when they were played back to back.

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Also, as much as Margo Timmins has developed in terms of her vocal presence and her ease on stage, she still could do more to exploit the dramatic possibilities of certain songs. The set included two stormy rockers, “Hunted” and “Murder, Tonight, in the Trailer Park,” in which the band, led by Ken Myhr’s angular, distorted guitar, stepped forward to paint scenes of violence and emotional havoc. Meanwhile, Timmins sang many of her lines in a restrained deadpan.

That approach was appropriate on record, where whipping up all-out hysteria would be the obvious, cliched thing to do. On stage, though, it would help to be more overt. Timmins broke through at the end of “Hunted” with the insistent demand of a woman who can no longer tolerate living in fear of being sexually attacked: “Do you know what it’s like to be hunted?” But the entire song would have been more memorable if that palpable pitch of fear and fed-up disgust had served as the emotional base line for the song, rather than its concluding clincher. Despite her progress, Timmins needs to find a higher gear.

Still, this was a mainly satisfying set. After leading with a long stretch of country-influenced songs, Cowboy Junkies reached back to their 1986 debut album, “Whites Off Earth Now!!” for sultry blues chestnuts by Lightnin’ Hopkins and John Lee Hooker. Dropping some coy whoops into Hopkins’ “Shining Moon,” Timmins underscored the song’s sexiness while adding a humorous touch.

The encore began tepidly with a bland run-through of the Junkies’ “Trinity Session” version of Lou Reed’s “Sweet Jane.” But they recovered to finish well with a lovely reading of Rodgers and Hart’s oft-recorded “Blue Moon.” Timmins was dreamy and caressing, a la the “Trinity” days, but she also sang with a firmness that suggested a waking dream instead of a fleeting mental image on the verge of sleep.

One of the set’s chief pleasures was the mid-set pairing of the yearning “A Horse in the Country” and the joyful “Anniversary Song,” the Junkies’ two most pop-savvy numbers. As it skipped through the catchy choruses, Timmins’ voice was bright, surging and bursting with enjoyment of the moment.

“Anniversary Song” rode a funky little R & B guitar lick possibly clipped from “Slip Away,” an old Clarence Carter hit. It even had Margo Timmins doing a demure little hippy-shake to the song’s closing beats. If Cowboy Junkies continues the incremental gain in ease and assertiveness evident over its past three Coach House visits, come the millennium Timmins could be bopping with the best of them.

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Opening was Freedy Johnston, one of the better new singer-songwriters to have emerged in the 1990s.

The New York City-based, Kansas-bred performer strummed an acoustic guitar and got capable lead-electric and backing vocal support from Marc Spencer of the Boston band Blood Oranges.

Johnston, an unimposing figure with a receding hairline, applied his gentle, hang-dog delivery to nuggets like “The Lucky One” and “Tearing Down This Place” from his strong 1992 album, “Can You Fly.” He also previewed a few songs from a June release on Elektra that will mark his major-label debut.

He brought a McCartney-esque melodic touch to some of his new songs, among them a good, deeply melancholy ballad apparently called “Perfect Day.”

With his laid-back style and downcast material, Johnston didn’t exactly rouse a house in which most listeners were encountering him for the first time. But it’s hard to imagine anyone sophisticated enough to like the Cowboy Junkies failing to enjoy “Can You Fly,” in which many of Johnston’s songs get an edgier, Stones-influenced rock ‘n’ roll treatment.