FIRST LISTEN
Austin’s Gary Clark Jr. digs deep on soulful new record
If you hear “The Healing,” the fifirst song on Gary Clark Jr.’s new record “The Story of Sonny Boy Slim,” on the radio, it might not include the 30-second snippet that opens the track on the album. A fifield recording of a weary voice — not Clark’s; the liner notes credit Christopher Copeland — singing the chorus of the gospel hymn “Hard Fighting Sol- dier,” the brief passage sets a serious tone for the remarkable song that follows.
“The Healing” is the best thing Clark has written in more than a decade of making records, a passionate affirmation of what music means to him. “It requires devotion from those who truly believe,” Clark sings, and later: “For some people it’s too much; for some people it heal s. ” Fleshed out on “The Story of Sonny Boy Slim” from the solo guitar-and-vocal renditions that surfaced in videos of his live shows this summer, the “The Healing” digs deep into an indeli-ble groove.
Spiked with Clark’s stinging guitar leads and the soulful support of his sisters Shawn and Savannah on backing vocals, the song builds to a soaring bridge. “God only knows who will save us,” Clark ponders, doubling back to that hymnal intro. But for him, the answer is right there in the song: “This music is our healing.”
The 12 songs that follow on “The Story of Sunny Boy Slim,” which comes out Friday on Warner Bros. Records, fifind Clark taking hard looks both outward and inward at what needs to be healed. If “The Story of Sonny Boy Slim” seems more steeped in soul-searching than his 2012 breakthrough album “Blak and Blu,” it’s worth remembering how much has happened to him in the interim. In addition to becoming a father — something that clearly played into lyrics such as “my baby’s crying, so now my baby’s crying” from the blistering “Grinder” — he’s also become a majorleague star.
Since winning a Grammy for the “Blak and Blu” track “Please Come Home,” Clark has become the go-to guitarist for high-profile media events and collaborations. He jammed with Dave Grohl and Joe Walsh on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” for a prime-time Beatles TV special, and joined Grohl and the Foo Fighters on their Austin “Sonic Highways” episode. A Stevie Wonder tribute at this year’s Grammys found him teaming with Beyonce and Ed Sheeran. On the home front, he helped push last year’s 40th-anniversary “Austin City Limits” special taping into the stratosphere, and he helped pay tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan at this year’s induction of Vaughan into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
If that turned up the heat on expectations for “The Story of Sonny Boy Slim,” Clark’s response was simply to keep pushing himself as an artist. Musically, the album, recorded at Austin’s Arlyn Studios, fifinds Clark firmly in the driver’s seat: He leads with his signature guitar playing and a vocal style that alternates between gritty blues and sweet falsetto, but he also lays down most of the bass, drums and keyboard tracks himself. (On the alluring “Wings,” for instance, everything but loc al singer Tameca Jones’ backing vocal comes from Clark .)
He even takes up harmonica on “Church,” a simple but striking acoustic number in which Clark pauses to remind himself that “I was taught to be patient, and I was taught to be kind.” Its strippeddown folk arrangement reminds that Clark pays little attention to boundaries of style or genre: He bounces from the oldschool soul of “BYOB” to the dirty blues of “Shake” to the sonic adventurousness of “Star” as if they’re all part of his own personal musical genre.
On “Hold On,” he merges blues, soul, funk, jazz and more into an immediately engaging blend that produces the record’s most pop-sounding track , but one that nevertheless tackles some tough issues. “Another mother on TV crying ’cause her boy didn’t make it,” he sings, wondering how to deal with the turmoil of “a whole world gone crazy” before concluding that the answer is just to “hold on.”
The album-closing “Down to Ride” feels somewhat out of place, a fairly straightforward love song with a stretchedout atmospheric outro that doesn’t quite warrant its nearly eight-minute run time. And as a whole, “The Story of Sonny Boy Slim” might have benefited from being a little slimmer; at 53 minutes, it’s a long haul. But in those moments when everything comes together, this music is our healing, indeed.
More new music
Here’s a look at a few other recent releases by Austin musicians:
David Pulkingham, “Little Pearl.” A decadelong anchor of Alejandro Escovedo’s band before taking a job with Patty Griffin two years ago, Pulkingham is one of Austin’s most accomplished and talented guitarists. He’s equally adept at delicate acoustic picking and atmospheric electric explorations; but while his previous solo releases focused on instrumen- tal material, with “Little Pearl” he stretches out as a songwriter and singer.
Author and poet Daniel Wolf assisted with the lyrics on several songs, and Griffin and Amy Cook make vocal cameos. But this is Pulkingham’s show, and he’s a sophisticated musical presence, whether keeping things grace - fully low-key on “Feelin’ Hallelujah” and “Sad Country Song,” turning up the heat on “Whiskey From Your Mouth” and “Bitter Pill,” or grooving to the jazzy rhythm of “Leaving Catalina.”
David Ramirez, “Fables.” Though he’s been putting out solo records and touring the country for a decade, Ramirez takes a big step forward with “Fables,” which was produced by noted Seattle singer-songwriter Noah Gundersen. That’s a good reference point for Ramirez’s work, which strikes a similar chord to the deeply emotional, carefully crafted songs for which Gundersen is known.
A strikingly soulful vocalist even as his music tends more toward folk-rock instrumentation, Ramirez ultimately sounds like very much his own artist, whether he’s quietly shuffling through the shadows on “Rock and a Hard Place” and “On Your Side” or kicking up the tempo on “Communion” and “Hold On.”
Nightowls, “Fame Sessions.” “We wanted to make a pilgrimage to one of the birthplaces of Southern soul music,” Nightowls leader Ryan Harkrider said last fall about his band’s sessions at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala., that resulted in this eight-song release. Building upon their fine “Good as Gold” album of 2013, “Fame Sessions” digs deeper into the heart of the classic ’60s sounds the Nightowls have brought forth on Monday nights for several years on South Lamar at the Highball and One-2One Bar.
Though Harkrider’s high-and-sweet vocals lead the way, this is very much a band effort: All songs are co-writes between multiple members, and the core instrumentalists get a big boost from backing-vocal choruses and horn-section blasts. Muscle Shoals legends Spooner Oldham (keyboards) and David Hood (bass) appear on a couple of tracks — but it’s the band’s own songwriting and musicianship that stands out throughout “Fame Sessions.”