Kasey Chambers - Bittersweet (2014)

Having sold 1.2 million albums, Kasey Chambers sits in that rare artistic position as a hugely successful commercial songwriter/performer, while still retaining integrity and respect from the country communities where she first established her talent. Bittersweet is Chambers’ first album since she split from husband Shane Nicholson after they released their 2012 collaborative album Wreck & Ruin. It finds her canvassing a range of styles and moods, often with religious/biblical references, without sacrificing her heart-on-sleeve emotiveness, innate sense of melody and country heart.

Chambers also recorded the album without brother Nash in the producer chair and that no doubt played a large part in the freshness and wider framework of musicality on which the songs are built. Hell Of A Way To Go is positively Stevie Nicks-ish with its sultry, snaking groove; Stalker is contemporary bluegrass rock’n’roll in the vein of Little Bastard; while House On A Hill is a traditionally heartbreaking country lament using a crumbling house as a metaphor for a fragmenting relationship or state of mind. The title track, a duet with Bernard Fanning, sways with a Neil Young looseness that works surprisingly well.

Chambers does occasionally cross the line into over-earnestness like the lyrically unconvincing Is God Real?, but those misfires are few and far between. Chambers has again come up with a strong batch of songs that give her the opportunity to rewardingly dig into a few vocal corners she hasn’t explored to any great extent on previous albums.