"Hungover" is a good one to think about. the "little drummer boy" beat expresses hope for the woman who's finally feeling big enough to stand on her own; but what's said about the partner (a lover? a parent?) is so minimal that you don't get a feeling for the size of her triumph
i disagree - it's necessary that he's out of sight and increasingly out of mind, because the alienating distance between them is crucial to the story. we don't know anything about him because she increasingly doesn't recognise him. what makes the song great is the way clark builds the scale of each mini-accomplishment gradually - and the way she mixes up the literal with the metaphorical til they're the same thing. and there are so many awakenings and emancipations contained in it, sexual and domestic and financial...
― lex pretend, Wednesday, 6 November 2013 16:40 (ten years ago) link
all true! I think I'd be better able to understand the awakenings if I understood more of what was keeping her down
or maybe that's the wrong way to think about it: maybe he's just another stranger partner relative to which her triumphs, no matter how small, look big
― Euler, Wednesday, 6 November 2013 17:37 (ten years ago) link
A good country song is, to me, like a pinewood derby car made in the scouts. With relatively little variation, and with a completely understood purpose, there is still an infinite measure of quality available through steady, measured craftmanship. I enjoy country songs that employ plain, straight languge and are predictable in the second half of their couplets or quatrains without needing a rim shot - unless it's on the 2 and the 4. It's like ordering a pepperoni pizza and getting exactly what the hell you asked for: a pepperoni pizza.
This album, from start to finish, is just that. It has wit, good stories, imagry that paints but doesn't overwhelm or stifle a listeners ability to connect, and is told in deceptively simple terms that belie the otherwise obvious care and effort Ms. Clark puts into her songs.
Without going into specifics about this song or that one - although "Hold My Hand" is the one that grabbed me the most this morning - I think the best thing I can say about this album is that it is full of songs that I know that at some point in the future I will reach for out a need that I know that song will satisfy.
I have to thank Ned for putting this one on his FB profile this morning. I probably would have missed it otherwise.
― Survivalist Compound Row (B.L.A.M.), Wednesday, 6 November 2013 18:08 (ten years ago) link
Yer welcome, sir.
― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 6 November 2013 18:15 (ten years ago) link
first he told her that her hair looked nicepromised he was gonna leave his wifeyeah, two more liesshe didn't care
god she's so good at stories within stories. stories a lesser songwriter would build a career on, brandy clark tosses off in half a verse
― lex pretend, Friday, 29 November 2013 15:22 (ten years ago) link
"I'm definitely someone who likes to get my heart broke," she says. "I can get a little addicted to that. And my life is pretty stable, so I have to find it elsewhere. I like to get into books and movies and, honestly, other people's drama, I kind of feed off of that, because it does give me fodder for songs. And not just because it gives me fodder for songs — it's just something I like, weirdly."
http://www.spin.com/articles/brandy-clark-interview/
<3
― lex pretend, Friday, 6 December 2013 20:06 (ten years ago) link
On Letterman!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmFRXZdtDJY
― pearly-dewdrops' bops (monotony), Friday, 10 January 2014 18:50 (ten years ago) link
Grammy-nominated for Best New Artist!
― jaymc, Friday, 5 December 2014 16:57 (nine years ago) link
:D
― Johnny Fever, Friday, 5 December 2014 17:01 (nine years ago) link
Wait, is that award still a kiss of death?
we've been enthusing on the country thread
idk what a kiss of death would even mean in the context of an artist who only sold 29k of the album in the first place
― lex pretend, Friday, 5 December 2014 17:15 (nine years ago) link
Shane McAnally @shanemcanally 3h3 hours agoDear every major Nashville label that passed on @TheBrandyClark - suck it.
― lex pretend, Friday, 5 December 2014 17:39 (nine years ago) link
Nice
― Johnny Fever, Friday, 5 December 2014 17:41 (nine years ago) link
she also got nominated for best country album :)))
― dyl, Friday, 5 December 2014 19:36 (nine years ago) link
showcasing her way with a metaphor even when responding to her grammy noms
http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/music/2014/12/05/brandy-clark-grammy-best-new-artist-country-album-nomination/19970359/
"I've always thought the biggest gift would be to be able to attend your own funeral," she says. "It's amazing to me how much of an outpouring of love there is at funerals. For me, today's is an example of that. This is like my own funeral."
― lex pretend, Saturday, 6 December 2014 10:08 (nine years ago) link
also an awareness of the category's ill-starred history
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 6 December 2014 12:41 (nine years ago) link
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/brandy-clark-the-grammys-country-dark-horse-speaks-out-20150115
― shmup....smug....shmub....shmug.... (forksclovetofu), Friday, 16 January 2015 16:49 (nine years ago) link
new single!!!!! it's GREAT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9lDtvaGQio
― cher guevara (lex pretend), Friday, 22 January 2016 14:13 (eight years ago) link
I'm into it.
― Ⓓⓡ. (Johnny Fever), Friday, 22 January 2016 14:22 (eight years ago) link
It's got a pulse!
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 22 January 2016 14:22 (eight years ago) link
I've never been to jail / but, hell, I wouldn't put it past me
ha ha, excellent
― human and working on getting beer (longneck), Friday, 22 January 2016 14:25 (eight years ago) link
"The things that turn you on/Are what you want to change" is a good lyric that gains poignancy knowing her sexuality.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 22 January 2016 14:26 (eight years ago) link
the instrumentation is great
― HYPERLINK TO RAP GENIUS (BradNelson), Friday, 22 January 2016 15:16 (eight years ago) link
Instrumentation reminds me of, like, Prins Thomas.
― jaymc, Monday, 2 May 2016 22:13 (eight years ago) link
http://www.npr.org/2016/06/02/479446410/first-listen-brandy-clark-big-day-in-a-small-town
― the hallouminati (lex pretend), Friday, 3 June 2016 08:38 (seven years ago) link
OH MY GOD, "DAUGHTER"
yeah she's taken the leap -- THIS is how I wanted 12 Stories to sound like
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 3 June 2016 10:34 (seven years ago) link
i'm finding the songs about individual characters to be more affecting than those about townsfolk collectively ("soap opera"; "big day in a small town").
imo "since you've gone to heaven" bridges that gap effectively, though. could imagine people finding that one maudlin, but it gave me real feelings. hope she plays it when i see her this weekend.
― dc, Friday, 3 June 2016 13:30 (seven years ago) link
w/out giving away too much from my filed review, I think the album is crisp and confident, if at times still too beholden to a writer's sensibility. Creative writing workshops across the land have so fetishized the detail that they have come to stand for realism—the realism of the inventory, the TSA travel advisory. Good singers don’t need details. Intimations, overheard remarks, aperçues, doggerel even—singers can inflect them. At times the sheer number of details in BDIAST is oppressive. Waffle House? Check. Ill-fitting sequined dress? Check. Jeans needin’ patchin’? Check. She's (still) not enough of a singer to transform. AtT times I'm like, enough already.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 3 June 2016 13:37 (seven years ago) link
the unnecessary detail that jumped out to me as distracting was the chevy truck in "broke." obvs chevy shows up often in country music as product placement or to establish cred or w/e, but i sorta doubted that was the case here. my mind started running through other adjectives they might have considered using there (pick-up, beat-up); took me outta the song a little bit.
― dc, Friday, 3 June 2016 13:45 (seven years ago) link
but overall i like most of the songs on here. and "girl next door" still sounds great.
― dc, Friday, 3 June 2016 13:46 (seven years ago) link
"Daughter" is my jam too – that organ!
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 3 June 2016 13:58 (seven years ago) link
That's gotta be Kacey doing backups on "Daughter" right?
― bunny slopes, Friday, 3 June 2016 19:59 (seven years ago) link
the kind of detail i like isn't the writerly stuff but things like, on "homecoming queen", that little aside "or the captain of the football team". it's a bitchy song (and all the better for it) masquerading as clark's trademark empathy but that one little aside is amazing in a "boys don't think you've got off easy, still got my eye on you" way
― the hallouminati (lex pretend), Friday, 10 June 2016 12:30 (seven years ago) link
i heard "broke" live over a year ago and it's as good as it was then. the way the chorus rolls across the phrase "generic...coke"
i like that she can afford arrangements and is good at them but i never saw her plainness as a negative in any way before. i don't think that's fundamentally changed, how awkward does she seem even existing in the "girl next door" video (and you wonder whether anyone involved even for a second contemplated casting her as the character whose voice she was singing in)
― the hallouminati (lex pretend), Friday, 10 June 2016 12:33 (seven years ago) link
generally i think it's a record that shows she can scale even greater, more attention-grabbing heights than she did on 12 stories and suffers a bit when it tries to reprise it ("you can come over" is nice enough but like..."what'll keep me out of heaven" is unbeatable already)
― the hallouminati (lex pretend), Friday, 10 June 2016 12:35 (seven years ago) link
My review: http://www.spin.com/2016/06/review-brandy-clark-big-day-in-a-small-town/
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 10 June 2016 12:38 (seven years ago) link
this is so good!! "girl next door"!
― Mordy, Friday, 10 June 2016 19:06 (seven years ago) link
indeed
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 10 June 2016 19:11 (seven years ago) link
i love "girl next door" but i hate the songwriting/arrangement impulse that caused her to add the "and go right now and don't look back..." tag at the end of the first chorus. such a perfect verse/chorus until that point, and then it's like, "wait, there's another tool in my nashville songwriting toolkit, here it is, boom!" would have been a nice bridge a minute later, but here it's a bridge too soon. and as a result of that, she has to add another bridge after it the next time it comes around, the "the thing that turns you on..." part, which seems tacked-on and too on-the-nose.
a great song that could have been a perfect song with two hours' less work, imo.
(and i'm your nitpicking cuz)
― fact checking cuz, Friday, 10 June 2016 19:46 (seven years ago) link
I didn't mind the filigree so much as the other overstuffed songs. I realize I'm complaining about songs having too many details.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 10 June 2016 19:50 (seven years ago) link
oh my god, the way "since you've gone to heaven" pans out from family tragedy to social decay is heartbreaking
― the hallouminati (lex pretend), Tuesday, 14 June 2016 09:22 (seven years ago) link
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jun/16/brandy-clark-country-music-nashville-interview
― the hallouminati (lex pretend), Thursday, 16 June 2016 12:11 (seven years ago) link
http://www.npr.org/2016/06/16/482329768/brandy-clark-tiny-desk-concert
― Mordy, Monday, 20 June 2016 18:10 (seven years ago) link
Why Brandy, how tart of you
https://twitter.com/TheBrandyClark/status/771384198720520192
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 1 September 2016 16:29 (seven years ago) link
best / cleverest line / lyric / turn of phrase on Big Day? let's hear 'em...
― alpine static, Sunday, 9 October 2016 20:05 (seven years ago) link
saw her live last night, two acoustic guitars and that was it. pretty much perfect. she closed with 'America the Beautiful' segueing into 'Pray to Jesus' which felt like a real message
― the notes the loon doesn't play (ulysses), Saturday, 12 November 2016 18:17 (seven years ago) link
h/t underrated aero:
https://www.rollingstone.com/country/news/oak-ridge-boys-sing-brandy-clark-hear-pray-to-jesus-w516704
― etc, Monday, 19 February 2018 01:57 (six years ago) link
can't get enough of this tune
― she carries a torch. two torches, actually (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Monday, 19 February 2018 02:02 (six years ago) link
just started up the new one
― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Friday, 6 March 2020 16:33 (four years ago) link