\u201cThis music is my healing \/ When this world upsets me, this music sets me free.\u201d <\/p>\n
The thing about this mantra\u2014so simple and direct as to verge on trite\u2014is that Gary Clark Jr. sings it like he\u2019s feeling it from the tips of his long, lanky fingers to the soles of his well-worn shoes. It\u2019s not a line. It\u2019s real. And that\u2019s part of what makes him a special, special talent: that realness.<\/p>\n
Singer\/songwriter\/guitar-slinger Clark has by now long since established himself as a world-class musical alchemist who bounces from influence (the Delta blues of Howlin\u2019 Wolf) to influence (the explosive guitar heroics of Jimi Hendrix) to influence (the smooth old-school soul of Smokey Robinson) to influence (the gritty street poetry of Gil Scott-Heron) with the fluid facility of a born master. Beyond his ability to match these greats stride for stride, again and again, what genuinely astonishes is the way he takes the colors invented by these esteemed forebears and paints fresh pictures with them, inventing new hybrids and fresh tones left and right as if it was the easiest, most natural thing in the world for an artist to do.<\/p>\n
I could go on, of course, but it occurs to me that you came for an album review, not a testimonial.<\/p>\n
Live North America 2016<\/i> culls tracks from Clark\u2019s triumphant runs of shows last year in support of his tremendous 2015 album The Story Of Sonny Boy Slim<\/i><\/a>. The fact that it follows his last concert recording, the two-disc Live<\/i><\/a>, by only two years matters little, as the former drew from pre-Sonny Boy<\/i> material while the new album debuts live renditions of seven tracks from Sonny Boy<\/i> plus a pair of classic blues covers. Only two tracks (\u201cWhen My Train Pulls In\u201d and bruising set-closer \u201cNumb\u201d) are repeated from Live<\/i>.<\/p>\n Opening up with a pair of big-boned numbers, Clark\u2019s guitar soars and wails through the suitably grinding \u201cGrinder,\u201d holding a single vibrating note at the end that releases all of the wrung-out tension built through the previous five minutes. \u201cThe Healing,\u201d source of the opening quote above, is everything you\u2019d want it to be, heartfelt and transporting, climaxing with a swerving, wrenching, emphatic solo that goes positively interstellar. When Clark turns right around and unleashes a devastating falsetto on \u201cOur Love\u201d (a steamy ballad) and \u201cCold Blooded\u201d (dark electro-soul), you start to understand just how not-fair it is that one slender man contains this much talent. <\/p>\n