Nashville’s singer, songwriter, luthier and hard liver Guy Clark delivered one of the best country albums of the Noughties, 2009’s Somedays the Song Writes You. Sporting the likes of "Hemingway’s Whiskey", "The Guitar" and "Maybe I Can Paint Over That", it ranked with the best he’s done. Four years later, the world must be a darker place for Clark following the death of his wife Suzanne. Nor is he well enough to tour. We’ll not get the chance to see him in the UK again. And that, considering the strength of these new songs, is enough to make you weep.
The album is cowritten with a variety of partners, and features Verlon Thompson and Shawn Camp in the acoustic line-up. Opener "Cornmeal Waltz" is an idealised, poetic vision of the Wild West dance floor. If Yeats had been a cowboy, he’d have written like this. The title song is sad and strong and lovely – "the camera loves you, and so do I" – a paean to Suzanne, and not shying from the conflicts, as well as the comforts, of marriage. "Hell Bent on a Heartache" is one of those deceptively simple songs that Clark does so well, all emotion and experience, hard-won and quietly, intimately sung.
"El Coyote" relates a horrific border tale of illegal Mexican immigrants left to die in a locked truck by its driver, while "Heroes" attends to the subject of traumatised soldiers returning from the field of battle with the battle still raging inside them. Further in, "Good Advice" is funny and brilliant - “We heard it all more than twice, not again Jesus Christ, the funny thing about good advice, is that everyone’s got some" – but if it’s good advice you need, on how to feel and how to live with the mis-steps on your dance card, then Guy Clark's songbook is always a good place to turn to.
Watch Guy Clark performing "My Favorite Picture of You"
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