Gary Clark Jr.: His Golden Grinder

If anybody claims music nowadays has sold its soul and such, you might want to show them some of Gary Clark Jr. It’s been a while since I stumbled onto good music these days which gives me a certain something, of which roughness somehow could inflame the dancing youth and also brings light alleviation like an old blues. There is energy of an apparent raw talent scorching on fire as Clark performs “Bright Lights” on his EP entitled the same one in 2011. Despite his first major label LP, “Blak and Blu” (2012), didn’t scored any hit single, Clark’s music had made Eric Clapton want to play again, even Buddy Guy thinks he might save the blues, so as mentioned by the Rolling Stone. Through his latest album “The Story of Sonny Boy Slim” (2015), one of his tracks, “Grinder”, which portrays survival struggle of a hard-working man, he transcends some gritty blues-based rock through his heavy grinder. And still on the same album, he lets his tender falsetto croon in “Our Love” sends you back to 1960s classic rock feeling, the kind of gentle music you could listen to while having an afternoon coffee sip or the one which could simply lull you to bed. Influenced by blues, jazz, soul country, as well as hip hop, Clark’s music is like an offspring of past and present; those of soulful smooth vocal of Marvin Gaye, fuzzy guitar chops of Jimi Hendrix, and earthier timbre of John Mayer. Indeed, when he said, “You can look forward to some loud guitar, some sweet guitar. Some things that I’m into”, he just precisely sums up the stark naked truth about his music.

Take a listen to his performance of “Grinder” and “Our Love”. Perhaps then you’ll feel what I feel about this talented soul, Gary Clark Jr.