Aussie import prefers wide open spaces

NEW YORK -- She's on a bus ride from Chicago to Austin, and singer Kasey Chambers is enjoying every minute of it.

The memory of her Sydney-to-New York flight is too fresh, along with the jet lag that -- together with her pregnancy -- made her spend a day sick in her hotel room before struggling through a performance. She doesn't want to step on a plane.

Or maybe the wide open spaces she glimpses from the bus window simply remind her of home.

As a girl growing up in Australia, Chambers' family would spend months at a time in the outback's Nullabor Plain, away from electricity and indoor plumbing.

"We didn't have any radio or TV," she said via mobile phone. "Our only form of entertainment was listening to tapes or my dad playing songs on the guitar. It automatically became a really important part of our lives."

Chambers, now 25, emerged as a remarkably fully-formed artist in her teens, writing songs that were praised by fellow country-rock artists Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle and Dwight Yoakam.

The title track to Chambers' new album, "Barricades & Brickwalls," has a crunchy guitar sound reminiscent of Williams' "Changed the Locks." The swaggering singer promises an intended beau, "I'll be damned if you're not my man before the sun goes down."

From that raucous start, the disc quiets down considerably and is heavy on traditional country, even bluegrass ballads.

Arguably, the album's centerpieces are "Not Pretty Enough" and "If I Were You," both songs of aching vulnerability.

"Sometimes I sound so confident, like on 'Barricades,"' she said. "Then you listen to 'Not Pretty Enough' and you think I sound like the most insecure person in the world. But we've all got these sides to us. It just depends on what mood I'm in when I write the songs."

Her voice, which has been compared to Emmylou Harris', is well-suited to heartbreak. It won over fellow Australian songwriter Paul Kelly, who duets with Chambers on the new album's "I Still Pray."

"It's a beautiful voice," he said. "It's got a clarity, a cut and a cry."

Country radio mostly ignores Chambers, as is usually the case with artists associated with the alternative country movement.

She'll grumble about that in the privacy of her home. But one thing she's learned in visits to this country is that even artists who don't get played on country radio can build successful careers.

"I have this theory that people who want to hear it will end up hearing it," she said. "The sort of people that listen to mainstream country radio and love all that stuff, I'm not sure that they should be listening to Lucinda Williams. She's too good for them."