Reviews

Chris Clark
Album: Across A Carnival
Label: Listen Here!
Tracks: 12
Website: https://www.chrisclarkband.net/

Hailing from Jamaica, as in Vermont not the Caribbean, Clark has been taken under the wing of Hungrytown's Ken Anderson who serves as both producer and multi-instrumentalist on his debut album, which, rooted in the country sounds of the late 60s and early 70s, is loaded with songs of back roads, small towns, old mistakes, chance meetings and the restless pull of the horizon.

Hungrytown's Rebecca Hall also duets on three cuts, including the twangsome warbled and harmonica-laced going home opener 'I Suppose' ("You've been waiting in a faded, dated blue dress/I've been meaning to give you a call/And I'm trying to get back to South Dakota/It's a wonder you're still there at all"). She's there too along with Lissa Schneckenburger on fiddle for the jangly scampering Seeger-esque stomper 'I'm Tryin'' about keeping your chin up ("Never had a lonely day/just that time you left in May/took my heart, took my money…I may be broke now, honey I'm trying").

The title track is a slower, moodier psychedelic Americana desert country gothic dreamscape wandering, with tinkling bells, through memory, longing and imagination ("On a hill, in the fall/I came across a carnival/Ferris wheel, carousel/In a dream, wide awake/A tattooed girl with a snake/Is it real? /Hard to tell").

It's back to restless drifters ("I know these hills like a rolling train/I move around like a weathervane") with the goodtime backwoods shuffling 'Sometimes', Hall and reverb returning for the steady jogging rhythm of the desert blues-inflected 'Out of Tune', described as a confession that sometimes harmony is easier to lose than to find ("Is it too late to find/all the notes we left behind?").

A brief pulsating drone fingerpicked instrumental, 'Behind The Screen Door' paves the way into the harmonica-led 'There You Are' and a return the theme of departures and goodbyes ("I know you're leaving'/In that old blue car…Just don't go too far/But I'll wave just the same and say there you are") followed aptly enough by the double bass anchored and skittering percussion of bittersweet road anthem 'Never Look Back' ("When I move on/Don't wear black/Take my hand, never look back"), another number that harks to 60s folk troubadours that sports the finger-jabbing verse "Out with the boys is where you've been/Say you're singing those gospel hymns/Never really figured you a churchgoing type/You only came around when the fruit was ripe".

While there's generally a no regrets attitude to his songs of moving on, the acoustic fingerpicked 'Sparks Around Most' with its distant Kristofferson hints rings the changes with a reflection on lost chances and things left unsaid ("Pulled off the ring that she found/Walked a while waiting then she threw it to the ground/Then a tree grew, died and then fell down… you made the way on your own/Flying off the front porch, it never felt like home/Kind of knew you'd end up alone"). It links directly into the downcast twanged trotting honky tonker 'Other Side Of Lonely' ("On the dance floor I'm seeing/The one chance that I let go/It's my own damn fault/No one else to blame/And they'll all tell you/You're getting what you gave/So don't you complain") inviting other self-destructive fools to join in the Kristofferson-ish chorus "Now I am here feeling down and abused/Walking the streets in worn weathered shoes/Angels and sinners/Hide the same way/It's a long ride/From the other side of lonely".

The final Hall duet comes with 'Broken Down Car', a bluesy swamp rocker in which two misfits keep each other company ("The girl beside me is wild and reckless/Wants a pearl necklace/Every time I'm in town/Burns through my dollars like a California fire/She's a liar/

When she says she'll stick around") while life slowly falls apart around them ("On the town we go together/Worn and weathered/Never getting very far/Inside, outside kneel and pray/Towed away/We're a broken down car"). It ends, then, with the stripped-down keyboards-backed and effects coated 'Wicked Soul', a meditation on silence, grace (No crying, no dying in this place/All open, words spoken, embrace") and those who somehow know us better than we know ourselves, ending with a cathartic "shine, oh shine/You wicked soul".

If, as The Band said, life is a travelling carnival, then you really need to buy a ticket to Clark's outstanding debut while it's in town.

Mike Davies

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