LOOKBACK MACHiNE: KASEY CHAMBERS

ROUTES & BRANCHES

featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music

December 4, 2024

Scott Foley, purveyor of dust

Kasey Chambers should be mentioned among the foremost songwriters in our kind of music, responsible for a handful of the strongest songs and albums of the 2000s. Just in her early twenties upon the release of her debut, The Captain, she came out of her native Australia with a family pedigree and a voice seemingly handpicked by the country music deities. 2006's Carnival proved Chambers' ability to stretch beyond her chosen genre, though she has rarely needed to do so, releasing a pair of watermark records with her husband at the time, Shane Nicholson. While her last few albums haven't been embraced by the americana mainstream, we would make a case that both Bittersweet and this year's Backbone are as worthy as her early catalog. While we flirted shamelessly with the thought of including her groundbreaking live take on Enimem's "Lose Yourself", we didn't want to lessen the impact of Kasey Chambers' own writing as heard across the thirty (30) stellar examples that follow: 

KASEY CHAMBERS: thirty favorites

- "Cry Like a Baby" The Captain  (EMI, Jun 00)

- "The Captain" The Captain

- "Southern Kind Of Life" The Captain

- "Last Hard Bible" The Captain

- "Barricades and Brickwalls" Barricades & Brick Walls  (EMI, Oct 01)

- "Not Pretty Enough" Barricades & Brick Walls

- "A Little Bit Lonesome" Barricades & Brick Walls

- "Pony" Wayward Angel  (EMI, Sep 04)

- "Bluebird" Wayward Angel

- "Like a River" Wayward Angel

- "Sign On the Door" Carnival  (Warner, Aug 06)

- "Rattlin' Bones" Rattlin' Bones (w/Shane Nicholson)  (Liberation, Apr 08)

- "Sweetest Waste Of Time" Rattlin' Bones

- "Someone Like Me" Little Bird  (Liberation, Sep 10)

- "Beautiful Mess" Little Bird

- "Devil On Your Back" Little Bird

- "Little Bird" Little Bird

- "Wreck and Ruin" Wreck & Ruin (w/Shane Nicholson)  (Sugar Hill, Sep 12)

- "Familiar Strangers" Wreck & Ruin

- "Have Mercy On Me" Wreck & Ruin

- "Is God Real" Bittersweet  (Essence, Jul 15)

- "Wheelbarrow (ft Ashleigh Dallas)" Bittersweet

- "Bittersweet (ft Bernard Fanning)" Bittersweet

- "Too Late To Save Me" Bittersweet

- "Ain't No Little Girl" Dragonfly  (Essence, Jan 17)

- "Satellite" Dragonfly

- "If We Had a Child (ft Keith Urban)" Dragonfly

- "Harvest & the Seed (ft Emmylou Harris)" Campfire  (Essence, May 18)

- "Backbone (Desert Child)" Backbone  (Essence, Oct 24)

- "Love Like Springsteen" Backbone

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