Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson - Rattlin' Bones

Nicholson's voice complements Chambers' well, and this record seems like a genuinely collaborative affair, but inevitably I've approached it as 'the new Kasey Chambers album', and as such, it's much as I'd expected based on the launch - much more of a bluegrass/country flavour than probably anything she's done before, and certainly more so than the thoroughly enjoyable Carnival, but retaining the crystalline, spacious production and modern touches which give the music its immediacy and much of its charm. For all of that, though, it hasn't left a great impression on me so far (and I've had the album for a while) - perhaps, I've listened to too much of this kind of stuff before, and in moving in this direction, Chambers has left behind some of the idiosyncratic elements (both edginess and sweetness) which distinguish so much of her previous work.