'Brandy Clark' by Brandy Clark
Brandy Clark could’ve easily joined Highwomen alongside Brandi Carlile, Maren Morris, Natalie Hemby and Amanda Shires. Carlile must know that: she’s the producer on Clark’s fourth long-player, Brandy Clark.
Carlile also provides instrumental and vocal support on nearly all the 11 tracks here, but her presence is more a comforting hand than a pushy one, and she’s not among Clark’s many co-writers, including Kacey Musgraves collaborator Shane McAnally and Morris collaborator Jessie Jo Dillon.
For all that creative support, Clark stands steadily enough on her own: “She Smoked in the House” is all hers, a portrait of her tough-minded, hard-living grandmother that relies on midtempo simplicity and a country-house clutter of details.
The music favors clean coziness, even when a string quartet swoops in to mix it up with Jedd Hughes’s Roger McGuinnish 12-string guitar on the road-rhythm song “Northwest” or when Derek Trucks calls up dark-minded spirits via slide guitar on the justifiably vengeful opener, “Ain’t Enough Rocks.”
No matter how poetic Clark might wax, the lyrics are confidently straightforward and she sings them in a melodically and emotionally direct style, so there’s no mistaking her rueful desire for an unreliable lover in “All Over Again” or the battle between maturity and neediness in “Come Back to Me.”
Her directness lends particular and poignant excellence to “Dear Insecurity,” a duet with Carlile in which they could be murmuring to themselves as they look in their mirrors. As a simultaneous backhanded welcome and earnest plea to negativity, it’s sharp and true and worthy of comparison to Steve Earle’s “My Old Friend the Blues.”
Like the rest of the album, “Dear Insecurity” feels as right for pop or country airplay as anything performed by Morris or Musgraves. If the title of Brandy Clark indicates that Clark is reintroducing herself to the mainstream, then the mainstream would be stupid not to extend her a heartier welcome this time.
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