Brandy Clark: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

June 20, 2016 by JACOB GANZ • There’s no explicit narrative threading together Brandy Clark’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 Reba McEntire, Miranda Lambert, LeAnn Rimes and Kacey Musgraves 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