Kasey Chambers The Captain (Asylum)
Kasey Chambers' American debut The Captain is grounded in the 24-year-old Australian native's experiences as a desert nomad wandering through the desolate, inhospitable Nullarbor Plain of south-central Australia. First released down under in 1999, The Captain is a collection of intense, complex and stirring songs filled with warm, personal tales of the artist's attempts to understand life's unresolved tensions. Kasey Chambers' ballad-driven album challenges modern country music with a potent mix of acoustic and electric guitars, fiddle passages and hard-driven roots-rock percussion.
Songs with sweet, rich melodies such as the biographical "Southern Kind of Life" and the emotionally honest "These Pines" are interspersed with sharper and more urgent tunes such as "Don't Talk Back" and "Last Hard Bible," countering each other in an anachronistic combination of hillbilly heartache and well-crafted kick-ass sass. The standout track is the album closer. "We're All Gonna Die Someday" reveals Chamber's youthful wisdom with lyrics such as "It hurts down here 'cos we're running out of beer/But we're all gonna die someday." Throughout, however, her vibrant voice retains a fresh, distinctive sound that, while not immediately irresistible, is soulfully unrefined and remarkably vibrant. A- -Yan Fang
Artful Dodger Rewind (London/Public Demand)
Ah, UK garage, that magnificent union of house's delicious divas and pristine hi-hats with jungle's breakbeats and primal bass. It's sexy, funky and smooth as hell. It's a similar but tastier alternative to the hip-hop fluff dominating American club charts. It's the most enticing dance genre in years.
DJ compilations like Rewind, mixed by leading garage producers Artful Dodger, aim to provide an introduction to the garage sound. The opener, Artful Dodger's own "Woman Trouble," is enormously convincing: if listeners are initially thrown off by its weird, shuffling beats, even the most funk-deprived booties will succumb to the awesome mess of kick drums, crisp snares, fat melodic bass and sensuous vocals that soon follow. The remaining tracks mirror this musical blueprint with fairly uniform degrees of success. Even a remix of an All Saints song manages to sound fresh.
Some of the mix's downfalls are apparent. The sameness of many songs reveals this style's infancy. And it gets insipid after the 10th diva professes her unending love for you, baby. Despite these issues, it's clear that UK garage has potential. Rewind leaves you feeling like you've been partying the night away in a packed, sweaty club, not some drug-addled rave. B -Ryan J. Kuo