Aussie country icon shows her class and maturity in a wonderfully varied collection.
25 years on from her 1999 debut ‘The Captain’, Australian Kasey Chambers returns with studio album number 13. ‘Backbone’ is a joint release to coincide the with the publication of her book ‘Just Don’t Be A Dickhead’ (Hardie Grant Books), reviewed on this site a few weeks ago. For those who may have missed Chamber’s career progression since that high-profile debut release, the new album will reveal a mature and confident Chambers, honed on a highly successful career at home in the intervening years.
Those absentees will still find a familiarity with that early version of herself. The title track, with its fiddles and country twang, could almost have been plucked directly from that first album while the excellent ‘Broken Cup’ features steel guitar at its heart. But, while these songs remain familiar and faithful to her country roots there is much more subtlety and variety to Chamber’s music these days. On the breathless ‘Take Me Down The Mountain’ fast-paced country/bluegrass meets gospel to startling effect and it is that soulful, gospel sound that often surfaces on the album. This emphasis reaches a peak with the back-to-back tracks ‘My Kingdom Come’, a gorgeous duet with Ondara set to a pared back acoustic accompaniment followed by ‘Something To Believe In’ which is complemented with soaring organ befitting a fine vocal.
But the really great thing about ‘Backbone’ though is Chambers shifting through a whole range of styles, as if to show off her vocal range, and it’s that which makes this such a fine album. Duetting with ex-husband and fellow Aussie country idol Shane Nicholson on ‘The Divorce Song’, both lyrically and stylistically, this is firmly My Darling Clementine territory. “We said till death do us part, but death didn’t come quick enough……We couldn’t survive as the marrying kind, but we do divorce pretty good.” As if to emphasise the point, and with a nod to other high-profile country partnerships “We sure ain’t no Johnny and June.” On ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ meanwhile Chambers channels her inner Imelda May as the gears and musical direction shifts once more, this time into a toe-tapping, and in Aussie vernacular, a beaut of a song.
Chambers wrote the book and songs together and QR codes appear throughout the book linking to the story’s correlating song. For those who opt purely for the musical side, ‘Backbone’ stands alone as a terrific collection of songs and, for those for whom Chambers may have slipped under their 21st century radar, it is a good a reason as any to get reacquainted with the talented Ms Chambers.
