The Singles Jukebox

And we’ll provide directions.

[Video][Website]
[6.00]

Edward Okulicz: So can your single choices, Brandy… this instead of “Daughter,” really? Like it fine on the album, though as ever Clark walks the line between sharp and precious a little unevenly. When taken as a single I keep feeling like it’s well written but the mood and voice suggest it would have been better sung by Ashley Monroe as it makes me think of her track “Bombshell” with another five years of numbness on top.  The verses are strong but the chorus feels a bit rote, like a formality. The best songs on Big Day in a Small Town have stings and twists and this one is a competent straight line.
[6]

Alfred Soto: She knows about love, and she sure knows about hell, and her ability to make both scary in her average plainspoken tone distinguishes her sophomore album from the staid debut. Her concentration on a still point matches the steady tapping of those drums. 
[7]

Ryo Miyauchi: The heartbreak in this narrative is the kind where Brandy Clark has lived by herself for a while, so a more weathered chorus sounds more realistic. It’s hard to ask her to recreate a sense of devastation felt from a fresh wound when she probably said it a hundred times over since day one of being single. That said, it coasts too gentle for a song with such a title. It’s a sigh and shrug, but I want a little more hollering.
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: Brandy Clark’s songs are always sharply well-written, so lines like “love can go to hell, like roses in a vase of whiskey” prick like they’re supposed to, especially when supported by Jay Joyce’s banjo-laden production and Clark’s strong vocal delivery. Another great single from one of the year’s best albums, Big Day in a Small Town.
[8]

Claire Biddles: The most thrilling moment is one of the first — when it briefly feels that Clark is going to jump straight in with the anger of the title in the very first line — but instead “Love Can Go to Hell” reveals itself as a fairly standard run-through of the punctuation marks of heartbreak. The “I wish you well” narrative is well-worn by now, and I prefer it when it’s delivered with bite rather than something like obligation. 
[4]

Peter Ryan: This is another example of Clark’s workmanlike delivery sabotaging her material. Her songs are riddled with lyrical bullseyes the likes of “roses in a vase of whiskey,” and when she builds them into tracks that have some bite it’s a winning approach. The restless shuffle of the verse gets “Love Can Go to Hell” off to a promising start, but the chorus finds it collapsing into languorous resignation. Without an arrangement that pulls its share of the weight, the burden rests with the vocal to wring the feeling out of her imagery, and it’s not up to the challenge — the bridge could use some juice, any number of lines that could flow or trail off in ellipsis just sort of stop dead in their tracks (the “sparrow” one is particularly abrupt). The whole thing needs a cupful of vinegar or an infusion of longing or anything to give the carefully considered writing some shape.
[5]