Chastity Brown has the kind of contemporary voice that could easily have been tailored for a mainstream popular market in the Emeli Sandé, Adele mould. Instead, she wisely chooses to play to her strengths by keeping things raw and rootsy.
Her gravelly, plaintive voice and slide guitar predominates although she also plays piano, banjo and harmonica and is backed by some of Nashville's finest session musicians.
Brown wrote all eleven tunes on a record which is presented as her fourth although the three previous releases seem to have sunk without trace and are not even listed on her website.
The travelling theme identified in the album title features as the record's key motif. In When We Get There she is "driving down a dirt road" while inI Left Homeshe sings "guess I'll head on down the road just to see what I can find".
Leroy also finds her with no clear destination in mind: "where we're heading, I've never seen before" and there's a similar tinge of fatalism in the line "I was headed down the road headed nowhere" in Lift Us.
She may sing of being lost and directionless but, musically, she knows exactly where she's going and, above all, where she's coming from.
She is now based in Minnesota but was raised in Tennessee and is following a Southern road that has been taken by artists as diverse as Leadbelly, Nina Simone and Aretha Franklin.
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Chastity Brown says in an online interview that: "I like exploring the fine, tangled line between the gospel and the blues" although it is only the closing track (If You Let Me) that you find her seeking divine guidance. The rest of the time, this is a lonely journey leaving the future to chance or fate.
After You is the most upbeat track and a standout tune that has already been picked up by BBC/HBO for their TV film Mary & Martha starring Hilary Swank.
A couple more tunes in this vein would have given the record a better balance. Could've Been A Sunday has a similar immediacy but most of the record sticks to a slick, low-key groove,
A little more variety would have been welcome but she seems disinclined to sacrifice authenticity for the sake a few catchy tunes.
The quiet assurance and maturity of this album indicates this is an artist who is in it for the long haul.
Chastity Brown's website
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