Desert Island Recordings: The Trinity Session by The Cowboy Junkies

Faced with the prospect of an untimely death, 25-year-old Mary
Lambert Swale drew up an unusually specific last will and
testament. The daughter of the wealthy English family, Swale
anonymously bequeathed to the Anglican Church of Toronto 5000
sterling, an astronomical sum in 1845, to erect a new church. This
gift came with stipulations, however. The building must be
constructed in the Gothic Style in a cruciform structure. The
congregation must be named Church of the Holy Trinity. And, most
importantly, that all people be welcome in the church and that its
pews be “free and unappropriated forever.” This was a radical
request as a common practice among Anglican churches of the time
was charging pew reservations as a way to allow the more affluent
to worship undisturbed by the pathetic prayer riff-raff. The Church
of the Holy Trinity was dedicated in October 1847 and its doors
have ever more been open to all. It is fitting that this deference
to the past, insistence on beauty, and the requirement for openness
would be built into a church that 140 years later would play host
to a recording session that would make the environment a critical
aspect of its music. The Cowboy Junkies would hole up in the
Trinity Church and quietly play their haunting Shoegaze Americana
into a single microphone nestled in the midst of the five-story
Cathedral. The hushed beauty that was committed to tape in that
sacred place on the “The Trinity Session” is a commentary against
the increasingly digital and frantic world surrounding
them.   If you'd like to hear why Lou Reed's "Take No
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