Jeff Clarke Miracle After Miracle After

Jeff Clarke is a seeker. From the rough and ready ministrations of his hellraising, garage-rocking days in Demon's Claws and The Black Lips, to the wounded world-weariness that still cracks through the polish of his lusher latest solo effort "Miracle after Miracle after ...", the idiosyncratic gospel he preaches is always shot through with a hard-won resilience, an uncanny naïveté, a persistent sense of curiosity.
The album is, in contrast to his previous solo work “Locust” (recorded in a single session in a forest), more beautifully embellished, but never overloaded—there is plenty of room for the strangely melancholic voice and songwriting, which is finely woven but occasionally also sharply edged.
At its heart, this is folk music, and such traditionally excellent songwriting makes comparisons both easy to make and inherently reductive. Clarke is drawing from the same well as countless other psychic diarist. He could be mentioned in the same breath as Connie Converse, Daniel Johnston and Atlas Sound, for example. But Clarke so successfully locates himself within this tradition of artists as to make references redundant, if not breaking the mold, then stretching it into a shape all his own.
There's an aptness to this record's title, songs as good as these should rightfully be considered miracles. There's an ambiguity too, it's tempting to read it as sardonic, a forlorn cynicism directed towards those who would claim life is one continuous blessing after another. There is certainly some amount of pain in Clarke's voice. But also detectable is a quiet but insistent belief in the Good of the world; an admittance that if we're honest with ourselves, we're all seeking after one miracle or another.
(Joseph Thomas)