Customer Reviews

Rattlin Bones

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After a certain age and a certain number of --- oh, let's not call them "failed", let's say "successfully completed" --- relationships, it's inspiring to hear a man and woman singing together. When the couple is married, even more inspiring. For what is a happy marriage if not harmony under pressure? To spend your days and nights singing as a team --- that, friends, is togetherness you can believe in.

I first encountered Kasey Chambers when she released her debut "The Captain". She had a fogcutter of a voice that demanded attention. And she could flatten a note like the best bluegrass singers --- you'd swear she'd left the hollow only to get a bunch of piercings.

In fact, Kasey Chambers is Australian. And that's the least of it --- when she was very young, her father, the musician Bill Chambers, moved his family into a barren zone of that empty continent and spent a decade as a fox hunter. Kasey grew up under a giant sky and an empty landscape; at night, around a campfire, her father led his family in songs straight from the Grand Ole Opry. She might as well have been living in the hollow.

Kasey Chambers is now married to Shane Nicholson, also Australian, and they have a debut of their own. I saw them at a club in New York, with her father as the sidekick, and I can report her voice is still as big as her personality. Brash? Loud? This woman has a personality sharp enough to shave with!

It would be easy to say that Kasey Chambers dominates her husband --- Nicholson is one of those skinny guys with the wispy beard and the porkpie hat --- but he's hardly Desi to her Lucy. If anything, he's the superior musician, and the songs he's co-written with his wife are easily the best she's ever done.

Which is not to say these are goopy love songs. The title song announces that heaven and hell are the CD's dominant images. To what might as well be the steady hammering on an anvil, they sing:

Smoke don't rise
Fuel don't burn
Sun don't shine no more
Late one night, sorrow come round
Scratching at my door
But I cut my hands
And break my back
Draggin' this bag of stones
Till they bury me down, beneath the ground
With the dust and rattlin' bones

And then they're off, trading lines, as dobros, banjos, lap-steel guitars and fiddles work their magic underneath. It's spooky stuff, and when she sings about her "monkey on the wire", the writing takes you very far --- those dark desires are "walking like Jesus with voodoo in their eyes."

Just that loud, just that soft. When the pace slows, Kasey Chambers seems to have invented sadness. Together, Chambers and Nicholson take love as it comes: "Let's hold our breath and give it just one more year." And face the darkest possibility: "Let's hope that what we fear ain't what we've become."

"Rattlin' Bones" hit #1 in Australia. I can understand why. It's not the kind of two-for-one CD we so often get here --- a collection of duets, a star turn. It is, as Chambers says, "an album that sounds like a band with two singers in it."

For once, she understates. This CD is as big and bold as the sky she was raised under, an outrageously fine enterprise that has the rare power, in less than an hour, to break your heart and make you believe in endless love.

My favourite album to date.
Stand outs to me were Monkey On A Wire, One More Year, Jackson Hole, Your Day Will Come and the title track, Rattlin' Bones.

This album, with more references about hell and the devil is surprisingly uplifting.
There's no duets or anyone singing lead while the other sings back up vocals, it just Kasey and Shane singing at their best.
It's bluegrass, white man's gospel, raw-boned country and the blues that leaves you with a gutsy, warm, sometimes swinging, sometimes gloriously sad set of songs meant to be enjoyed.

I would recommend this album and seeing them live to anyone. It's so worth it.

Kasey Chambers has been a staple on my Ipod forever (new fans might want to check out her superb back-catalog), but this album will just take your breath away. Its great that this is finally getting recognition in the US after solid success in Australia and New Zealand, because quite frankly, this is certainly one of the releases of the year.

So what does the music sound like. Think of this as a male-female alt-folk 'duet' album, and you have it down right. But there is a lyrical wonder to it that transcends ordinary songwriting. The closest album I can compare this to is "Ballad of the Broken Seas" by Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan. The instrumentation is very much like that CD, and if you like anything by Isobel Campbell, you will love this.

The music also reminded me of Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue's "Where The Wild Roses Grow" from the late 1990s. If this sort of dark, folksy, rootsy music is your bag, you will love this. Like any concept album, you need to put this on and let it do its thing. Three spins and youre in. Amongst current releases, I would say this compliments Emmylou Harris' "All I Intended to Be" very well - listen to both on a solo day in, and you'll reap the rewards. Truly superb stuff.

Needless to say, this is a must-buy. Four well deserved stars.

Better than anything we could expect from one of the all time best. Wonderful listening with each time through. As they say, excellent "roots" music that pushes the envelope of today's singer/songwriters.

Rattlin' Bones is a duet CD by husband and wife Shane Nicholson and Kasey Chambers. It is the first CD that they two have recorded together in its entirety, and the sound is a little bit different than what either of their solo work delivers. It wanders into the more traditional folk and bluegrass sounds than their contemporary country rock solo albums. Each song is an original that they wrote individually or together. This CD also faces the double edged sword of following closely behind Allison Krauss and Robert Plant's phenomenal CD Raising Sand. While Raising Sand created an audience for this type of CD, it also set an extremely high bar. It would not be entirely fair to hold Nicholson and Chambers to the same standard of these much more accomplished recording artists, but they do give a good account of themselves nonetheless.

Rattlin' Bones gets of to a very catchy start with the title track. Chambers and Nicholson deliver wonderful harmony on the chorus while trading off lines on the verses. Banjo also plays a big part on this track and the CD as a whole. Some tracks such as "The House That Never Was" and "Woe Is Mine" would sound at home on the O' Brother Where Art Thou? Soundtrack. This collection of songs also hits on the typical themes you would expect something in this genre: hard work ("Rattlin' Bones"), troubled relationships ("Once In A While", "Sweetest Waste Of Time", "One More Year"), and matters of faith ("No One Hurts Up Here", "The Devil's Inside My Head", and "Your Day Will Come"). Even though much of the CD deals with weighty topics, there is still a lighthearted air about it. Chambers and Nicholson have a false start on "The House That Never Was", and we hear them laughing as they start the song over. Also at the end of the CD after "Woe Is Mine", there is a short hidden track that features their young child singing a few lines. While these seem like small things, they give a balance to what could easily have been a dark and brooding CD. The one misstep on Rattlin' Bones is the more rock oriented "Jackson Hole" with its distorted vocal track. It sticks out like a sore thumb, and they had plenty of material without it. However, this is the only real blemish on an otherwise very solid CD. Give it a spin, and see what you think.

Download this: Rattlin' Bones

After hearing "Monkey on a Wire" on a Sirus FM channel, I knew I had to hear more from these two from Australia. Although I've not heard either one alone, the duo is pretty marvelous. The songs are bluegrass style, with some country inflections (that even I could tolerate even though I'm not a country music fan), the lyrics are a quite dark and melancholy, but the combination of the music, lyrics, and the voices make this CD definately worth the price! I'll be looking for more from them.

Good strong vocals from both Kasey and Shane. A bit heavy on the religion, but that's their thing. Also some redundancy of words in the lyrics -- wires figure in at least 2 songs, gold in two songs, and of course the requisite devil appearances. Other than that, the harmonies are tight and the songs get stuck in your head for days -- which doesn't bother me at all.

I'm way more of a rock n' roll than country girl but i love this cd. To be honest I would never have even given this cd a passing glance (cause they country genre is never on my shopping list) if Amazon had'nt recommended it to me. This cd is definatley more country twang then country pop which i was happy about. Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson compliment each other perfectly. All of the songs are to the point none of the long drug out oh oh ohs accompanied by hand raising here. These songs have substance they just don't repeat the chourus over + over to the same music. Be sure to give Once in a While and Sweetest Waste of Time a listen. This is my first review ,this cd just surprised me so much i had to let people know how good it is, so i hope it helps out.

Although I'm a big Kasey Chambers fan I was hesitant to get this cd because I was not enthralled with her previous cd- Carnival. Rattlin' Bones is an almost complete turn around though. I guess I'd consider myself a contempory folk singer-songwriter fan and this was right up my alley. Some of the songs on this cd would be right in place on cds such as Songcatcher or Oh Brother Where Art Thou. I hear shades of Julie Miller and Gillian Welch in several of the songs. Bottom line - I love it!

They will have a sound like Kasey Chambers&Shane Nicholsson on Rattlin Bones.The riff of Rattlin Bones is unique but sound looklike the Classic Fleetwood mac song "Tusk" but Kasey and Shane is so much better because they are very enthusiastic and you can here that they have fun when they are playing music.Their genre is good alternative country.The best ballad of the year 2008 is "One More Year" on this album.The music and the attitude is very generous with 14 great tracks.One of the most hypnotic and best tracks is Sleeping Cold, and Rattlin Bones is one of the three best album this year.