| Cowboy Sally's Twilight Laments for Lost Buckaroos | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | Sally Timms |
| Cover: | Cowboy Sally's Twilight Laments for Lost Buckaroos.jpg |
| Released: | 1999 |
| Genre: | Country |
| Label: | Bloodshot[1] |
| Producer: | Sally Timms, Jon Langford |
| Prev Title: | Cowboy Sally |
| Prev Year: | 1997 |
| Next Title: | Songs of False Hope and High Values |
| Next Year: | 2000 |
Cowboy Sally's Twilight Laments for Lost Buckaroos (stylized as Cowboy Sally's Twilight Laments ... for Lost Buckaroos) is an album by the English musician Sally Timms, released in 1999.[2] [3] The album is presented as an ersatz radio program for modern cowboys.[4]
Timms supported the album by touring with Freakwater.[5]
The album contains covers of songs written by Johnny Cash, Jill Sobule, Robbie Fulks, and Jeff Tweedy, among others.[6] Timms cowrote three of the album's songs with fellow Mekon Jon Langford.[7] Many Chicago musicians played on Cowboy Sally, including Tweedy, Tortoise's John Herndon, and members of the Pine Valley Cosmonauts.[8] Produced by Timms and Langford, the album was recorded in May 1999, in Chicago.[9] [10]
Pitchfork thought that "the production isn't the earthiest in the world, but the arrangements are simple and tight: it's mostly pedal steel guitar, fiddle, and occasional banjo-picking over delicate acoustic strumming." Entertainment Weekly wrote: "Avoiding Nashville’s tacky gloss and the neo-traditionalists’ killjoy sobriety, Timms sings old-fashioned country with respect and a dose of deadpan humor."[11] No Depression opined that "one reason the disc is so different from Nashville’s mainstream product is that it has a country and western vibe, which you never hear on country radio, with the exception of the occasional George Strait number."[12] The Chicago Tribune stated that Timms "sings midtempo lullabies that suggest our honky-tonk heroes were all just 'Dreaming Cowboys'—that the wide open spaces of the West were just another metaphor for loneliness that no amount of booze could quench."[13]
The New York Times determined that the album "flawlessly expresses her lonesome sensibility," writing that Timms's "voice, a secretive murmur refined by her native English accent, is the stuff of lullabies."[14] Greil Marcus, in Salon, concluded that "her touch is light, and deceptive; her reserves of depth seem bottomless... But nothing she's done before suggests the exquisite balance of this disc."[15] Spin noted that, "from the Velvet Underground's 'Lonesome Cowboy Bill' to Modest Mouse's 'Cowboy Dan', the best cowboys in rock songs are souls lost in a world they didn't create, and so it is with 'Dreaming Cowboy', which leads off Timms' record with a spate of lovely melancholy." The Los Angeles Daily News thought that Timms's "ethereal, yet precise vocals give every song a warm, mescal-and-honey resonance."
AllMusic wrote that "the warm, silky texture of Timms' voice is nicely matched to the moody country ethic of this album."