Brandy Clark's 12 Stories

yeah she's taken the leap -- THIS is how I wanted 12 Stories to sound like

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.

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 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.

but overall i like most of the songs on here. and "girl next door" still sounds great.

"Daughter" is my jam too – that organ!

That's gotta be Kacey doing backups on "Daughter" right?

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

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)

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)

My review: http://www.spin.com/2016/06/review-brandy-clark-big-day-in-a-small-town/

this is so good!! "girl next door"!

indeed

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)

I didn't mind the filigree so much as the other overstuffed songs. I realize I'm complaining about songs having too many details.

oh my god, the way "since you've gone to heaven" pans out from family tragedy to social decay is heartbreaking

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jun/16/brandy-clark-country-music-nashville-interview

http://www.npr.org/2016/06/16/482329768/brandy-clark-tiny-desk-concert

Why Brandy, how tart of you

https://twitter.com/TheBrandyClark/status/771384198720520192

best / cleverest line / lyric / turn of phrase on Big Day? let's hear 'em...

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

h/t underrated aero:

https://www.rollingstone.com/country/news/oak-ridge-boys-sing-brandy-clark-hear-pray-to-jesus-w516704

can't get enough of this tune

just started up the new one

It's good!

it is!

“pawn shop” is effortlessly lovely

"Apologies" is sounding the best so far.

flute AND horns

Surprised this wasn't linked yet:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/no-one-is-writing-better-country-songs-than-brandy-clark-is

"take a cinder block with you as a souvenir" is a great jab
i can do without the randy newman track but most of the rest is great.
it's a beautifully produced album, if this doesn't get radio play for her i can't imagine what will.

https://www.vulture.com/2020/03/brandy-clark-interview-your-life-is-a-record-best-songwriting.html

“Can we be Strangers” is an astounding song. Structurally put together so well. Great lyrics too. What a chorus.

so is "The Past is the Past." Fabulous use of strings generally.

this is a great record, killer AM radio energy

Closet thing I can think of is Lee Ann Womack’s last one

This is brilliant. No weak points at all. I even like "Bigger Boat".

i draw the line at Bigger Boat. Love everything else though!

"The Past is the Past" would make such a killer Springsteen song

"I wanna be at least almost close to worth your love" is such a devastating line

Real damn good. She gets better with each album, seems like. I raved about it at some length over on Rolling Country.

revisited the new one and goddamn is it great

it is! The new singles are not tho.

by which i mean "like mine" and "same devil" which strike me as fishing attempts to see what the country market wants

In celebration of the one-year anniversary of her critically acclaimed album, Your Life is a Record, eight-time GRAMMY nominee Brandy Clark will release a special new deluxe edition, Your Life is a Record (Deluxe), on March 5 on Warner Records. In addition to all eleven songs from Your Life is a Record, the deluxe album will feature six bonus tracks including “Remember Me Beautiful,” a new song Clark wrote earlier this year as part of NPR’s Morning Edition Song Project. The album will also feature special collaborations with Brandi Carlile (“Like Mine” and “Same Devil”) and Lindsey Buckingham (“The Past is the Past”) as well as live renditions of two album tracks: “Pawn Shop” and “Who You Thought I Was."

Moreover, in honor of the album’s anniversary, Clark will perform her first ticketed Livestream concert Saturday, March 6 at 8/7 CT via Mandolin. Tickets for the show are available now with a selection of purchase options, including a limited number of VIP packages with signed merchandise and a virtual meet & greet. Fans will also have the option to add a digital download of the deluxe album to their Livestream ticket, to be delivered on release day. Full details can be found at https://boxoffice.mandolin.com/collections/brandy-clark.

lindsey!

Austin City Limits livestream starting real soon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lTHkXdC6sc

Saw her at a small venue, blown away, what a songwriter!

Fantastic set: https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/brandy-clark/2022/lille-vega-copenhagen-denmark-bb0c18e.html