Chris Clark 2026
Across A Carnival
Taking the bull by the horns but not forgetting to pay the bills and count the cost, new master of Americana removes his Zorro mask.
Since most of the outlaws have passed to the greater pastures in the skies, country became quite a formulaic genre, and even platters by the Stetson-sporting stars are more often than not painted by numbers. Still, once in a blue moon, grassroots artists emerge out of nowhere with a saddlebag of songs amassed over a decade before these musicians dare to ride for their first rodeo, or corrida, of a record. Here’s one of those rare performers who don’t try to reform any style, yet on his inaugural album Chris Clark crosses stylistic frontiers time after time, unexpectedly so – there’s even the suspicion the singer from Jamaica, Vermont manages to surprise himself with the fruit of his toils and troubles.
Aided and abetted by HUNGRYTOWN’s Ken Anderson, whose instruments flesh out more than a few of Clark’s pieces, and Rebecca Hall, whose vocals bolster Chris’s in the Gram-Emmylou way, he may lull the listener into believing it’s all about usual pining for better times, as opener “I Suppose” suggests over a muscular guitar twang, but such an approach should only make the impact of atypical cuts much stronger. And even if tracks like “Out Of Tune” don’t break away from the Western idiom, their poetic warmth, stoked with Wurlitzer, won’t fail to pluck the audience’s heartstrings, whereas the fiddle-flaunting “I’m Trying” conceals a smile to better express the writer’s honesty. The titular ballad breaks the mold, however, to offer nightmarish imagery and then offset the gloom through Clark’s deadpan delivery and a glimmering arrangement, in which Anderson’s banjo, mandolin and Hammond play a major part.
Refusing to obey the rules – how many Appalachian tunes would venture to declare, “I don’t believe I believe in God” as “Sometimes” does when it edges towards rockabilly? – Chris and the coterie went as far as sculpting a shimmering prog-tinged “Behind The Screen Door” that requires no words to send a fearful message across the same fairground awe, and stripping an initial strum from “Never Look Back” to stake his claim to the place in the sun. Or under the moon – because the gorgeous “Wicked Soul” whips up a fresh nocturnal romance to bring the album to a close, and the unpretentious “Other Side Of Lonely” dances on a crepuscular air, while the “Broken Down Car” adds a bluesy harmonica to the humorous exchange of verses between Clark and Hall – with the “ladies first” order of the duet – to render the results irresistible.
Not in for fame or fortune, Chris Clark has arrived to stay.
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