RADAR: Chastity Brown

Over the course of four albums and countless club dates, thirty-year-old Chastity Brown has been quietly, assuredly building an audience for her distinctive hybrid of folk, soul and blues. Her latest Back-Road Highways, recorded in Nashville and released earlier this year, is her best and most confident step forward, an understated and unpolished jewel of roots music that one critic described as "soul searching grit and grace." With a measured and deliberate pace and confident but slow-simmering delivery, Brown's songs don't flood the senses as much as slowly seep in through tiny cracks and crevices. "Slow Time" exemplifies Highway's "less-is-more" attitude as the track builds slowly with a spacious, haunting sound, Brown stretching each word and phrase and letting each note breathe in its own space. "After You" quickens the pace with a mix of Graceland rhythms and layers of acoustic pickings while album closer "If You Let Me" drifts and sways like a gospel hymn, rich organ fills and piano shadings setting the stage for Brown's slow-smoked vocals and Robert Mulrennan's moaning guitar lines.

 

Chastity Brown - "After You" (from Back-Road Highways) Free Download

Chastity Brown - "Slow Time" (from Back-Road Highways)