![]() The album is predominantly acoustic, with Chambers' father smartly filling out the sounds on dobro, lap steel and electric guitar and brother Nash on acoustic guitar (he also produced). There's also a bit of Lucinda Williams and Roseanne Cash in the jangly country/rock breakup anthem, "You Got the Car," the road-represents-freedom testament of "Don't Talk Back" and the hard-scrabble country gospel fervor of "Last Hard Bible." In the opening "Cry Like a Baby," Chambers evokes the emotive ache of Iris Dement and the overall resonance of her vocals beg comparisons to Parton, Harris, Alison Krauss, Julie Miller, even Gillian Welch on a sunny day. Hers is a classic country sensibility, whether the neo-traditionalist Appalachian bent of "This Flower," with its wonderful echoes of vintage Dolly Parton the haunted country/rock of "These Pines," where Buddy Miller plays Gram Parsons to Chambers' Emmylou Harris or the ruminative "Southern Kind of Life," which proves its trans-Pacific rural empathy with lines like "my town wasn't even on the map/ you could pass through it in 20 seconds flat." That possibility exists because of a rare convergence of an astounding voice and accomplished writing, all the more remarkable because "The Captain" was released in Australia in 1999 and consists of songs Chambers wrote between the ages of 15 and 22. Maturing as both a vocalist and songwriter, Kasey Chambers eventually became Australia's top country singer and, based on her American debut, there's no reason she couldn't do the same stateside. ![]() Thankfully, father Bill Chambers loved the stylings of Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams and Johnny Cash and what started out as familial campfire singing gradually evolved into the Dead Ringer Band, featuring 9-year-old Kasey and her 12-year-old brother Nash. Meet Kasey Chambers, whose family "went bush" in 1976 - the same year she was born - and then spent the next decade in nomadic isolation and adventure. The Australian Outback is a fine setting for the Machiavellian melodrama of "Survivor II," but who'd ever imagine it could be a breeding ground for one of the most distinctive new voices in country music?
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