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29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Loud & brash, tender & broken: A CD that touches every emotion, September 17, 2008
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.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Rattlin' Bones Review, May 11, 2008
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.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Underrated Australian Masterpiece : Get It Now, September 18, 2008
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.
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