Review: Kasey Chambers’ Backbone
Kasey Chambers
Backbone
Essence Music Group/MGM
There couldn’t be a more fitting title for Kasey Chambers’ new album, Backbone. Not only does it epitomise the strength of character the singer-songwriter has displayed across her 25-year solo career, but it aptly describes the 15 biographical songs the new recording encapsulates. As diverse in temperament as it is in tone, Backbone stands a staunch testament to the breadth and depth of the artist and musician into which Chambers has evolved.
The album opens with the stirring ballad, A New Day Has Come. After slowly revealing itself through sultry drumming, a gorgeous swirl of electric and steel guitar, and Chambers’ lived-in vocals, the song impeccably builds into an inflicting soul-driven anthem. The musical mood quickly changes with the arrival of the album’s enchanting title track, Backbone (The Desert Child), where fiddle and mandolin join the instrumental fold for a spritely, countrified reflection on Chambers’ musical beginnings on the Nullarbor Plain.
Strings also underpin the more contemporary yearning of A Love Like Springsteen before the instrumentation fades away for a haunting a cappella introduction to Dart n Feather. As the song builds, mournful banjo and fiddle are joined by plaintive slide guitar before the song erupts into a frenzied newgrass-infused romp only to all again peel away to poignantly leave a chorus of voice. After being spellbound by the song’s exquisite execution, one can only agree with the trailing comment from drummer Brady Blade—the performance is indeed ‘badass.’
The self-produced album is being released in conjunction with a new book by Chambers. Titled Just Don’t Be a Dickhead, the book features a collection of stories that span the singer-songwriter’s life and a career, with the compositions on the album inspired by the stories in the book and vice versa. The book features QR codes that take readers to the corelating songs to provide a clever cross-genre narrative, giving both releases additional depth.
Little Red Riding Hood is an alluring yet toe-tapping take on vaudeville-tinged jazz before Silverado Girl poignantly returns Chambers to the ballad territory she commands so well. As a lyricist, Chambers has never shied away from wearing her heart on her sleeve, and nowhere is this more apparent than within The Divorce Song. A Johnny and June Cash-style duet with former partner Shane Nicholson, the song is crammed with lyrical treasures, ranging from gems like “If I wasted most of my best years, I’m glad they were wasted with you” to “We said till death do us part, but death didn’t come quick enough.”
Arlo is a touching ballad-come-love letter to one of her sons, while Broken Cup is classic Kasey Chambers—a seductive melody and astute and compelling lyrics conveyed through beseeching vocals, all underpinned by rustically orchestrated instrumentation. My Kingdom Come is a contemporary hymn featuring Ondara, the soulful Something to Believe In wafts beautifully on a swirl of organ, and Take Me Down the Mountain is a furious blast of gospel-inspired bluegrass.
The album closes with You Are Everything To Me and a live rendition of Lose Yourself, the former being a slow burning torch song while the latter a brooding ballad that explodes into a fuming wall of sound. While Chambers might do divorce pretty good, she does exacting self-expression even better. Never has she shied away from pouring her loves and losses, triumphs and defeats, and joys and sorrow into her songs, and this album is no exception. And, as everyone who can relate to that will tell you, it’s a trait that takes real Backbone.
BRETT LEIGH DICKS