Guy Clark: The Platinum Collection

The Platinum Collection brings together the best tracks from two of the albums Guy Clark made for Warner Bros. — 1978’s Guy Clark and 1981’s South Coast of Texas — while strangely omitting tracks from Clark’s final LP for WB, 1983’s Better Days, and instead adding some stray songs from his 1992 Asylum album Boats to Build (“Baton Rouge,” “Too Much,” “Must Be My Baby,” and “Ramblin’ Jack and Mahan”). But despite the confusing chronology, The Platinum Collection flows well as a portrait of the years between Clark’s early triumphs Old No. 1 and Texas Cooking, and his mid-Nineties “comeback” records. As the Eighties progressed, country music production inflated itself to epic proportions, but the songs here represent an antidote, retaining the low-key, understated swing of a living room picking session. Clark was an expert at crafting honky-tonk songs played at a workbench volume (he maintains a side career as a luthier), and while he is best remembered for “L.A. Freeway” and “Desperadoes Waiting For A Train,” “Lone Star Hotel” and “The South Coast of Texas” might be the best straight country songs he ever wrote.