There's no explicit narrative threading together 's second album, Big Day In A Small Town. Instead, the 11 interconnected songs map a small collection of streets, landmarks, loves, betrayals and heartbreaks that cohere into a place as particular and as universal as Winesburg or Grover's Corners.
Low-key and wry, Clark is a meticulous songwriter who made hits for , , LeAnn Rimes and before she put her own name on an album. (It's hard to believe that nobody wrote the instant-classic line, "If you want the girl next door, then go next door," before she did.) But when Clark steps in front of a mic and turns on the charm, her humor pulls the audience right into every single joke — watch for the knowing smile she shoots guitarist Miles Aubrey just before she drops a bomb at the end of the first chorus of "Daughter." In anyone else's hands, that song might have been a bitter revenge fantasy, but Clark's gently swooping verses and puckered choruses sketch the bemused, from-the-front-porch distance of wronged party who knows that fate is likely to do more damage to a cad than a key would ever do to his car's glossy paint job.
"I really developed a love for small towns when my dad died and I went home for his memorial service, and there were so many people they had to have it in a gym," Clark said before introducing "Since You've Gone To Heaven," the heartbreaker that closes Big Day. "And that's not an uncommon thing in a small town, but anywhere else in the world, that only happens for a celebrity." Clark's gift as a performer is making any room — even a newsroom on a cold, rainy spring afternoon — feel as warmly human.
Big Day In A Small Town is available now. () ()
Set List
Credits
Producers: Jacob Ganz, Niki Walker; Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin; Videographers: Niki Walker, Maia Stern; Editor: Claire Hannah Collins; Production Assistant: Marissa Lorusso; Photo: NPR.
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