“To me,” says six-time Grammy-nominee Brandy Clark of Your Life is a Record, “it’s endings and beginnings. You know, sometimes you have to have endings to have those beautiful beginnings. I hope people listening find themselves in me finding myself.” For Clark, who’s quietly become the go-to female creative for unlikely strength and compass-style truth, Record takes her gentle humanity and ability to sketch people’s motivations and conflicts, but instead of surveying the world around her, the woman The New York Times hails as “both a formalist and a sly subversive” looks in the mirror. A nuanced songwriter-leaning album, string sections, the occasional oboe, a raw accordion supplement the essential nucleus of producer Jay Joyce, Giles Reeves and Jedd Hughes cutting live—and always Clark’s melted caramel and sunshine voice, an instrument that carries dusky desire, unfettered joy and torchy ache with equal ease. As Joyce affirms, “Brandy’s like the (Linda) Ronstadt of today. She’s not a show-off, but so powerful and honest. When she sings, you believe her.