DAVE'S DIARY - 9 FEBRUARY 2009 - KIMBER SPARKS CD REVIEW
KIMBER SPARKS UP STRAIT AND JACKSON
2009 CD Review
KIMBER
SPARKS
IT'S HER TURN
"Last night was so unlike me/ well I've never done that before/ getting' high on Strait & Jackson/ hell a girl couldn't want for more." - Strait & Jackson - Kimber Sparks-Bill Chambers.
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Expatriate
American singer-songwriter Kimber Sparks has impeccable taste. Let's get the vocal compass swinging - Sparks has an ache that's etched in the timbre chopped by Elizabeth Cook and Ashton Shepherd and the embryonic era of Catherine Britt and her mentor Kasey. |
Now, all
of that would be a waste if the songs didn't measure up.
They do.
Sparks nails it from the title track entrée where the singer's
character carries out her threat to leave a wayward hell-raiser.
"She's on the other side of the bridge that's already burned/ but
he's standing on a bridge that won't burn/ it's her turn."
The message is a complete contrast to her revamp of the Vern Gosdin-Max
D Barnes hit Chiselled In Stone.
Gosdin must have approved her lyrical facelift.
The Voice joins her as the duet partner on the title track of his 1987
album that I picked up for 99c on the floor of a Fort Lauderdale store
when I attended former Geelong captain Michael Turner's last of his 245
games for Geelong (against Collingwood) in North Miami in 1988.
A BOTTLE OF JACK AIN'T ENOUGH
"Tonight I need someone to pull me through/ sorry Jack but this time you just won't do/ cause this hurt is like a feeling I never knew/ Dear God I've got to hand this one to you." - Lessons I Wish I'd Never Learned - Sparks-Chambers
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Sparks
dips deep into the traditional country well when a ruptured romance
forces her to choose between the bottle and the bible in Lessons
I Wish I'd Never Learned. So it's no surprise that momma is her character's crutch when her lover decamps in Nowhere To Go. She deftly uses the dance floor and radio as her metaphor. "I've got the biggest dance floor/ and my favourite song playin' on the radio/ and nobody else wantin' to dance." |
Sparks exploits her quota of heartache - with a little more help from her maternal mentor (spelled mama) in Damn You and the assertive clout of Moving On.
CHAMBERS MAID IN A MILLION YESTERDAYS
"A woman walks into the room/ wearing the same perfume/ you used to wear when you were loving me." - A Million Yesteryears - Sparks.
Chambers
takes the male lead in the regret driven A Million Yesterdays where
the lovers yearn for a happier ending.
But the rebounding victim - trapped twice in succession by faux saviours
in What A Fool Am I - borrows a little from Hank Williams and Jim
Lauderdale in her depiction of the villain as the "king of cold,
cold hearts."
Don't get the impression that Sparks is mortally wounded from skating
down the jagged edge of glacial flood of broken hearts.
There's a genie in the bottle of optimism in the fantasy fuelled Miracle
Man but tears flood the soft gospel finale Daddy's Song.
The character is definitely more Chambers than Sparks who arrived in Australia
in 2001 after singing in church as a child.
"Daddy didn't ask to love this cold, cold stage/ and God knows there's
so much he would change/ he'd be so proud to folks sing his song/ and
today's he finally found his way back home."
Yes, the double-edged sword that mortally wounded so many troubadours
on the lost highway.
On an even radio playing field Sparks would ignite mountains of airplay
and hefty media exposure.
But here in the unlucky radio country the singer's life raft is ABC and
community airwaves and CMC and Nu Country TV.
And, of course, the singer discovered by 2008 Australian Of The Year Lee
Kernaghan as a bull riding MC and barmaid in his era as owner of famed
Great Western Hotel in Rockhampton, has a soft place to fall.
Kimber graduated from Central Queensland University with a Bachelor's
Degree in Business & Marketing in October 2006 and began studying
for her MBA in early 2007.
Yes, the literate letters adorn her CV as well as her CD.