Carnival

Carnival

It isn’t quite a cataclysmic moment, like when Dylan did it, but Australia’s queen of alt.country goes solidly electric on her fourth solo album. She left her acoustic guitar at home and teams up with Midnight Oil’s Jim Moginie on electric guitar and keyboards and The John Butler Trio’s Michael Barker on drums. Powderfinger’s Bernard Fanning duets for “Hard Road” and You Am I’s Tim Rogers does the same for “I Got You Now.” The additional contributors add a few extra colors to Chambers’ musical scheme without ever overpowering her delicate sense of balance. (She’s never been a purist, always injecting pop elements into her country roots.) “Colour of a Carnival” rolls out with an adult-contemporary flair, while “Light Up A Candle” shows off her sassy side. Though she’s turned 30 her voice keeps its childlike wonder, and it’s that vulnerability that makes a slow burn like “Dangerous” so affecting. “I’m not angry about a thing / but anyway how much longer can you keep it in?” captures the bittersweet ambivalence of her best work.

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