Album Review: Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson - Wreck & Ruin

Deep in the hillbilly backwoods confluence of the Appalachians that has somehow found itself nestled somewhere between the Hunter Valley and the NSW Central Coast, two soulmates gathered a few likeminded friends together and over some eight days lay down a collection of tunes that the pair had written together during the odd break they were able to steal away from the pressures of parenthood and individual careers.

The result is Wreck & Ruin, the second and this time more fully collaborative album from Australian country music royalty Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson. I say more fully collaborative because - unlike their first outing together, the multi-award-winning Rattlin' Bones - all 13 tracks are credited jointly, where the earlier album still included a couple of songs each, written individually; because more often than not, each finishes the others line, as well as simply duets, and because this time too, the pair used the same four additional musicians, including a Wilson Picker, as a band, across the album.

The album itself ranges across much the same musical territory, embracing folk-gospel as you hear it in traditional hillbilly music – the opening 'Til Death Do Us Part, Have Mercy On Me, Up Or Down and the salutary Adam And Eve, reminding us that long before there was a hellhound or Satan on our trail, God had his own issues with our forgettin' the rules – through straight-ahead country as Lee Hazlewood used to deliver it – Wreck And Ruin, Flat Nail Joe – and country pop – The Quiet Life. Similarly, thematically, there are the traditional themes of love, death and old-time religion, with the odd playful ode to collective family illness (Sick As A Dog).

In that diversity, the pair and their band imbue a deeply felt yet lightly worn – there's plenty of laughter to be heard as songs begin or end – love of the whole ethos within which their collective creativity has so comfortably found a voice. It's that obvious passion that gives their music and this album an authenticity that lifts it above a mere tribute to an old-timey aesthetic they could only have experienced through their album collections.