Brandy Clark
12 Stories
2013
Brandy Clark’s 12 Stories was a throwback to the nineties in the very best way, as it marked the arrival of a fully formed singer-songwriter for the ages.
Early comparisons to Kacey Musgraves were inevitable, given Clark co-wrote “Follow Your Arrow” and the album opener “Pray to Jesus” mines similar territory to “Merry Go ‘Round.” But the two singer-songwriters have diverging points of view that are informed by different experiences. Musgraves observes small town life from the perspective of someone destined to leave it behind, while Clark’s gift as a writer is truly seeing those who never have the opportunity or societal privilege to leave.
That produces a wry sense of humor from Clark that comes with knowing that you’re going to be around these people for the rest of your life, so you might as well find the beauty in them, whether they’re selling drugs out of a trunk (“Take a Little Pill,”) getting high after your baby daddy’s a no show at family court (“The Day She Got Divorced,”) or silently enduring being the backup choice of the person you truly love (“Hold My Hand.”)
Clark’s characters are achingly human, and because she sees their essential worth in a world that doesn’t see them at all, we find ourselves empathizing with a woman getting ready to cheat on her husband (“What’ll Keep Me Out of Heaven”) and we feel the pain of another woman who realizes she’s repeating a dangerous cycle of generational trauma (“Just Like Him.”)
Elevating it all are Clark’s evocative and powerful vocals, which capture the euphoria of one women leaving her heartaches behind (“Hungover”) as eloquently as the dreary resignation of another who has no exit strategy, so she might as well self-medicate (“Get High.”) Arriving a full ten years after the Chicks completed the exile of intelligent and compelling women on country radio, 12 Stories revealed more about the interior lives of women in twelve songs than we’d heard on hundreds of radio hits the decade prior.
Ultimately, Clark’s debut is worthy of mention in the same breath as Matraca Berg’s Lying to the Moon and Kim Richey’s self-titled debut. If there had been some women on the radio to mine it for material, we might have made it through the bro country era unscathed. 12 Stories manages to be a predictor of the consistently excellent work we’d get from Clark, while also a sad reminder of what’s been lost since they made a Y chromosome required for country airplay again.
Additional Listening:
All of Brandy Clark’s albums are essential listening.
- The ambitious concept album Big Day in a Small Town cranks up the humor (“Daughter”) and the trauma (“Since You’ve Gone to Heaven”), serving as a supersized sequel to her debut set
- Her highwater mark to date, Your Life is a Record, has a lively horn-laden production and astonishing songwriting (“I’ll Be the Sad Song,” “Who Broke Whose Heart,” and…every other track, really)
- Brandi Carlile’s production is too understated for my tastes, but Clark’s pen is as sharp as ever on the best tracks (“Buried,” “She Smoked in the House”) from last year’s Grammy-winning Brandy Clark
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…”all of brandy clark’s albums are essential listening”, a fact is a fact.
I’m a pretty big fan of Brandy Clark. I remember being blown away by “12 Stories” and enjoyed all of her albums outside of the last one. I couldn’t get into the production at all.
Top 5 from “12 Stories”
“In Some Corner”
“What’ll Keep Me Out of Heaven”
“Hold My Hand”
“Pray to Jesus”
“Just Like Him”
Top 5 from “BDIAST”
“Three Kids, No Husband”
“Since You’ve Gone to Heaven”
“Daughter”
“Drinkin’, Smokin’, Cheatin”
“Homecoming Queen”
Top 5 from “Your Life Is a Record”
“Who You Thought I Was”
“I’ll Be the Sad Song”
“Long Walk”
“Apologies”
“Who Broke Whose Heart”