Raising the Bar

Editors’ Notes On the raucous follow-up to 2014’s Some Songs, this Grand Ole Opry-approved singer originally from Medicine Hat, Alberta, reminds us that she still feels more at home at a Nashville honky-tonk than out on the prairie. Clark’s voice is rich and expressive, with the slightest twang and plenty of attitude. Raising the Bar, her 11th album, offers finely drawn vignettes of small-town life and, in classic heartsick country fashion, spends more than a little time at the bottom of the bottle (see the lonesome lament “As Long as There’s a Bar,” the brash “Half a Bottle Down,” and the wistful “Weddings, Funerals, and Empty Hotel Bars”). Throw this one on next time you’re missing your favorite hometown drinking buddy.