Record review: Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson, "Rattlin' Bones"

 No comments  
 E-mail Story
 Print Story
  Share

 digg it!
 Facebook
 del.icio.us
Seed Newsvine
Fark It
Reddit

Text Size: 

Tools Sponsor

By L. KENT WOLGAMOTT / GZO

5 stars

Australia’s Kasey Chambers and her husband, Shane Nicholson, have made the alt. country record of the year with “Rattlin’ Bones.”

Chambers came to notice in the U.S. with 2000’s superb “The Captain” and made three more good-to-excellent country-folk albums for Warner Brothers, sounding like a girlish combination of Lucinda Williams and Emmylou Harris.

[+]Enlarge

Now on Sugar Hill, Chambers brings in her husband’s smooth tenor voice. Together, they’ve created a record of country songs that sound like they could have been recorded in 1948 or 1958 as easily as 2008.

“Sweetest Waste of Time,” for example, is a steel-drenched, honky-tonk ballad with lovely intertwined vocals. Its follow-up, “Monkey on a Wire,” is a spooky, fiddle-drenched kicker that conjures up Jesus, voodoo, dead roses and bullets in the back while singing about unquenchable desires. “The House That Never Was” is banjo-driven bluegrass.

The harmonies are stunning on “One More Year,” a let’s-hang-on ballad penned by Nicholson, and on the gospelish “No One Hurts Up Here.” They trade lines just as effectively on the hauntingly beautiful “Wildflower,” the record’s centerpiece.

“Rattlin’ Bones” is an unplugged record; if there’s an electric instrument on the record it’s quiet and deep in the mix. And it’s traditional American music to its core — even if it comes from a pair of Australians. But there’s enough pop sensibility to keep it from being retro rehash.

Chambers and Nicholson sound beautiful together. That’s apparent on the first listen, and “Rattlin’ Bones” becomes ever richer and captivating on repeat listenings.