Barricades And Brick Walls - Kasey Chambers

...concern):

1. Barricades And Brick Walls
2. Not Pretty Enough
3. On A Bad Day
4. Runaway Train
5. A Little Bit Lonesome
6. Nullabor Song
7. A Million Tears
8. Still Feeling Blue
9. This Mountain
10. Crossfire
11. Falling Into You
12. If I Were You
13. I Still Pray
14. Ignorance

"Barricades And Brick Walls" kicks off with ...
...enticing vocals, which are tinged with a hard edged slant. The guitar drops away to almost a footnote before being given centre stage for the break - the song itself content to virtually crawl along, but when it's this good, who needs speed?

"Am I Not Pretty Enough" is arguably one of this artist's best known songs (a video is available on Youtube for the curious). It's also one of her more accessible tracks if you're not ... more

Kasey Chambers is Australian yet writes and performs what would be classed in the United States as 'country rock' - something she's clearly rather good at. Another artist who appears to have slipped under most people's radar, her CD "Barricades And Brick Walls" would be a good introduction to this relatively unknown but very talented singer-songwriter. A couple of tracks from the album have made it onto UK radio (Bob Harris has featured "Not Pretty Enough" on his Saturday show, for instance - my introduction to Kasey Chambers), but for the most part she hasn't made much of an impact in the UK. Part of me wants her to remain obscure, keeping her music pure, simple and enjoyable, yet the rest of me thinks she deserves a bigger audience, one that will appreciate her writing and performing ability. She's got a clear, distinctive voice, aided by some excellent backing arrangements and on one track by the vocals of Lucinda Williams - when artists of this calibre want to come onboard, Kasey Chambers must be doing something right....

The CD has fourteen tracks on it (#14 is 'hidden' although the lyrics are printed as it was written with a children's charity in mind, royalties from the album going to this concern):

1. Barricades And Brick Walls
2. Not Pretty Enough
3. On A Bad Day
4. Runaway Train
5. A Little Bit Lonesome
6. Nullabor Song
7. A Million Tears
8. Still Feeling Blue
9. This Mountain
10. Crossfire
11. Falling Into You
12. If I Were You
13. I Still Pray
14. Ignorance

"Barricades And Brick Walls" kicks off with some understated but richly strummed guitar, leading into Kasey's enticing vocals, which are tinged with a hard edged slant. The guitar drops away to almost a footnote before being given centre stage for the break - the song itself content to virtually crawl along, but when it's this good, who needs speed?

"Am I Not Pretty Enough" is arguably one of this artist's best known songs (a video is available on Youtube for the curious). It's also one of her more accessible tracks if you're not into the whole 'country rock' thing, so has commercial appeal from various angles. That said, it's a very good few minutes, since it allows her vocals a slightly wider range and there's clearly no need for complicated backing since her voice appears to be an instrument all of it's own.

A more traditional arrangement appears on the following track, "On A Bad Day" - complete with banjo, dobro and fiddle. Despite this instruments, though, the song seems to meander along like the first two - why rush along at a frenetic pace when slow and pleasant does the trick? At this speed, you can pick out the nuances of her vocals, especially when she rises above Lucinda Williams' backing mid-track.

Whilst the first four tracks seem unhurried, there is a gear change by track #5 when "A Little Bit Lonesome" gets lined up. Kasey almost seems to have been taking lessons from Gretchen Wilson here, both in pace and lyrics. The song definitely rattles along to, and consequently benefits from, the accompanying lap steel - right from the get go you sit up and take notice. First time I heard this, I wondered whether it was a Patsy Cline cover because it's something she could have easily pulled off - if she'd have been able to get away with the line "I grabbed a glass, I said 'kiss my ass', I'm gonna drink you out of my head" - thus the reference to Gretchen Wilson above! This song never fails to bring a smile to my face when I hear.

An Australian take on 'country rock' in terms of lyrics turns up in "Nullabor Song", a slow and stripped down four-and-a-half minutes that seems to lay her emotions bare as well as the backing. There's clearly a vulnerability displayed in her vocals that is evident elsewhere if you take the trouble to look for it - but this song is so centred on her voice that it's easily recognisable here.

The pace gets ramped up beyond anything previous on her cover of Gram Parsons' "Still Feeling Blue", which has an obvious country-tinged backing arrangement complete with fiddle and banjo break and an "Alright!" mid-stream. Not a criticism of the performance by any means, though - it remains a rather enjoyable three minutes.

I'll leave descriptions of the other tracks to those who venture close enough to hear the album for themselves. Suffice it to say there's a mixture of speeds and styles on offer her, underpinned by her almost child-like in places but conversely hard-edged vocals. A slight contradiction, sure, but listen to her for yourself and you'll hear what I'm getting at. There's a refreshing simplicity to many of the tracks too, which takes nothing away from the performances that helped to make the album what it is. I don't regret buying "Barricades And Brick Walls" for an instant, and have her other albums ("Wayward Angel" and "The Captain") lined up on my wish-list for some time in the future. 

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