Slow, druggy, and hazy, yet intense, the Cowboy Junkies’ second album, 'The Trinity Session,' became an instant classic – and now that 1988 release has received that ultimate stamp of importance: the anniversary edition. Instead of simply feting it with a newly packaged re-master, the band opted to re-record it, this time with special guests. At once a brilliant decision, because this album will never need re-mastering. Recorded live with one microphone in the acoustically magnificent nave of the Church of the Holy Trinity in Toronto, the sound of the original Trinity Sessions is as pure as one can get. Drawn-out guitar patterns hinting at drone, lightly brushed drums, and Margo Timmins’ narrowly-ranged vocals looked back at the Velvet Underground, and ahead towards the incipient nebula of shoe-gazing. Never quite country, never quite blues, never quite heroin chic, the Junkies dipped into all of this and more to forge an urban tincture of rural complaint and big-city weariness.

The re-recorded sessions show that the band conceived this album not as a formula, but rather as an approach, a vision, an elusive inner sound welcoming new attempts at being captured. As befitting a twenty-year-old work, these pieces are given a roomier setting, with explorations around the edges and evincing a captivating depth not foreign to psychedelia. "Sweet Jane," the track that attracted all the attention the first time around, sounds as overwhelming now as then, with the pedal effects evoking the inviting sadness Lou Reed projected into this tale. Margo Timmins’ a capella “Mining For Gold” is a huskier, more earthy song now, but still heart-wrenching. “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” is even slower, inching through time like a worm through the earth.

Margo’s voice is essential to this vision – her timbre alone wavers enough to crawl and shimmy through this deep musical swamp – so the guest vocals are superfluous. Vic Chesnut certainly offers a unique take on these songs, but his voice is perhaps too reedy for the mood of these compositions. Natelie Merchant adds some high-end range for colour. Ryan Adams looks the part (especially on the companion DVD offering an uncut live performance of the first 9 tracks), and certainly offers thoughtful explorations with his guitar, but his vocals essentially come across as competent but anonymous when compared to the original.

The Cowboy Junkies never again offered an original recording reaching the heights of ‘The Trinity Session,’ but capturing another such tone poem was certainly close to impossible. So it is to their credit that this re-recording testifies neither to defeatism, nor nostalgia. These songs sounded simultaneously young and old when they first came out. They remain that way here – and is not that the hallmark of any masterpiece?