Time: 72:34
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2019
Styles: Blues Rock
Art: Front & Back
01. This Land (5:41)
02. What About Us (4:30)
03. I Got My Eyes On You (Locked & Loaded) (5:11)
04. I Walk Alone (3:44)
05. Feelin' Like A Million (3:34)
06. Gotta Get Into Something (3:04)
07. Got To Get Up (2:37)
08. Feed The Babies (4:46)
09. Pearl Cadillac (5:05)
10. When I'm Gone (3:48)
11. The Guitar Man (4:27)
12. Low Down Rolling Stone (4:18)
13. The Governor (2:21)
14. Don't Wait Til Tomorrow (4:05)
15. Dirty Dishes Blues (5:03)
16. Highway 71 (Bonus Track) (3:31)
17. Did Dat (Bonus Track) (6:42)
Gary Clark Jr. was born in the wrong era. In the 1960s or ’70s, he could easily have forged a career as a first-rank guitar hero: a Texan blues-rocker who can step on any stage and bring the place down with a searing guitar solo.
Prospects are different in the 21st century. The idea of a guitar hero was thoroughly undermined by punk and then pushed aside by increasingly computerized pop, dance music and hip-hop. For decades, vintage-style blues and the flesh-on-strings virtuosity it requires have been shunted toward nostalgia, preservationism and the die-hard realms of Americana. In 2019, Clark is an exceedingly rare figure, a bluesman who has a major-label recording contract and a worldwide audience, one he has built by tearing up stage after stage, show after show. While his songwriting has lagged behind his performing, he’s well aware of his strengths; he has alternated studio albums with live ones.
On “This Land,” his third major-label studio album, his songwriting has caught up with his playing. It has something to do with experience; now 35, Clark has been performing since his teens. It has something to do with the power of contrariness: that is, Clark’s determination to deliver the raw, analog, spontaneous opposite of crisply quantized digital content. And it has a lot to do with America in 2019, where division, frustration and seething anger can use an outlet with the historical resonance and emotional depth of the blues.
Prospects are different in the 21st century. The idea of a guitar hero was thoroughly undermined by punk and then pushed aside by increasingly computerized pop, dance music and hip-hop. For decades, vintage-style blues and the flesh-on-strings virtuosity it requires have been shunted toward nostalgia, preservationism and the die-hard realms of Americana. In 2019, Clark is an exceedingly rare figure, a bluesman who has a major-label recording contract and a worldwide audience, one he has built by tearing up stage after stage, show after show. While his songwriting has lagged behind his performing, he’s well aware of his strengths; he has alternated studio albums with live ones.
On “This Land,” his third major-label studio album, his songwriting has caught up with his playing. It has something to do with experience; now 35, Clark has been performing since his teens. It has something to do with the power of contrariness: that is, Clark’s determination to deliver the raw, analog, spontaneous opposite of crisply quantized digital content. And it has a lot to do with America in 2019, where division, frustration and seething anger can use an outlet with the historical resonance and emotional depth of the blues.
This Land