![]() Pun aside, “Buried” is impeccably penned and beautifully performed. On the other hand, those are just sour moments, stray clunkers. That’s exactly what she needs to sell the line on “Buried” that goes, “I’ll be an over-you-achiever.” Rather than a phrase that laughs in the face of unending heartache, it’s just a bad pun. Clark can break your heart with a turn of phrase or a stray observation, but too often she sings like she’s suppressing a sly wink. ![]() Produced by Brandi Carlile, this self-titled album only captures a few facets of a deeply complex artist. This is a collection that embraces melancholy to the neglect of humor, world-weariness at the expense of wit. Its position as the opener is a confusing bit of sequencing, but one that gestures toward a larger problem. “Ain’t Enough Rocks” is both the opening track on Brandy Clark and the only third-person, character-driver song on an album full of first-person testimonials on love, sex, family, and country music. But in this grave and self-consciously southern gothic version-more “ Janie’s Got a Gun” than “ Goodbye Earl”-she delivers that clever procession of liver-river-shiver in a self-serious whisper that deflates the song’s righteous anger. “Those girls don’t even shiver when they’re fishing off that dock.” Perhaps in another, more animated version of the song, those lines might stick out as defiant: a third finger in the face of anyone who might well, actually… the song’s vigilantism. “Cops blamed it on his liver, so they never drug the river,” she sings. They weigh his body down, then plead ignorance with the police. On the swampy murder ballad “Ain’t Enough Rocks,” Clark relates the story of a woman whose abusive husband turns his attention to her younger sister. ![]() There are more great examples on her fourth album, matter-of-factly titled Brandy Clark, but what’s more surprising are the few instances when her rhymes fall flat. ![]()
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