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<\/a>On March 14, Australian musical artist, Kacey Chambers will be appearing at the Heights Theatre along with Parker Millsap to promote her new double disc album, Dragonfly. She has gathered twenty songs that with very few exceptions generally drive toward a single theme, that of a strong, yet fragile, world-wise, yet innocent woman. The songs draw on pop, bluegrass, folk, blues and rock influences and may very well be her most adventurous endeavor to date.<\/p>\nThe second track of the first disc, \u201cAin\u2019t No Little Girl\u201d, initiates the theme with Kacey belting out a defiant bluesy boast of being able to take the good with the bad, backed up by an outstanding guitar solo. She quickly follows that with the sad \u201cSummer Pillow\u201d about a broken heart and broken promises.<\/p>\n
The sixth cut, \u201cRomeo and Juliet\u201d, imagines what it would be like to wake up to find that your true love had taken his life and is performed in a slightly Celtic folk style. The eighth track grows defiant again, proclaiming you \u201cAin\u2019t Worth Suffering For\u201d in a blues rock style that is reminiscent of a song that Lucinda Williams might have written. The courtship dance is renewed with the tenth track, \u201cHey\u201d, depicting a man and woman comparing each other\u2019s attributes to harmonica and banjo accompaniment.<\/p>\n
Throughout the first disc, Kacey sprinkles some songs that diverge from the theme, like \u201cGolden Rails\u201d a bluegrass gospel tune about riding a train to heaven and \u201cJonesboro\u201d, about how people were lured from a cruel world to follow Jim Jones with their families to an eventual death cult. There is a ballad about \u201cHenri Young\u201d who went to jail for petty theft and ended up being forgotten in solitary confinement for three years instead of 19 days, making him feral and eventually murdering a fellow prisoner.<\/p>\n
\u201cLong Year\u201d is a commentary about society moving from a fact based news diet to one that prefers sensationalism and features a slow burn guitar solo of note. My favorite song that doesn\u2019t quite follow the theme is \u201cTalking Baby Blues\u201d, which comes out as Kacey\u2019s autobiography spun in a Dylanesque talking blues format.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>The second disc stays a little closer to the theme, starting out with \u201cShackle and Chain\u201d about a young girl being tricked into a marriage and is done in the style of a chain gang spiritual. The title track, \u201cDragonfly\u201d is a delicate declaration of love for only one man from the perspective of an innocent young girl. Ms. Chambers tosses in a Louisiana blues dirge called \u201cIf I Died\u201d, played on an electric slide guitar through a fuzz pedal.<\/p>\n