Review & setlist: Gary Clark Jr. was largely even-keeled at MGM Music Hall Friday, but something shifted near the end (2024)

Concert Reviews

The lack of urgency that characterized Clark's playing occasionally seeped into the band as a whole.

By Marc Hirsh

June 8, 2024 | 6:09 PM

Gary Clark Jr. at MGM Music Hall at Fenway, Friday, June 7

It’s never quite so simple for an entire generation of rock and soul royalty to pass the torch to a successor, but if it were, Gary Clark Jr. would be about as well-positioned as anyone to take on the mantle. Five years ago, he played Gillette with the Rolling Stones as their opening act; this year’s JPEG Raw features guest appearances by funk kingpin George Clinton and all-around pop genius Stevie Wonder. He’s won a handful of Grammys in three different genres (rock, blues and R&B), has placed several albums in the top ten and regularly graces the covers of guitar magazines. His credentials are impeccable and he’s clearly got the blessings of his forebears.

But it was hard to see much of that play out at the MGM Music Hall at Fenway on Friday. The singer/guitarist belied his reputation as a fiery performer by remaining frustratingly earthbound for the bulk of his nearly two-and-a-half-hour concert. He was too even-keeled for his own good, leading a five-piece band (plus his three sisters on backing vocals) through a great many low simmers but few full boils.

It initially seemed as though Clark was intentionally going for restraint. The clackety beat of sticks on drum rims and a keyboard drone coalesced into the groaning blues riff of the opening “Maktub,” a consciousness-raising call to action where Clark squeezed out sparse lead lines that provided mostly just punctuation and color rather than guitar heroics. Later on, he sang the languid soul of “Our Love” in a falsetto straight out of ’70s R&B before playing a bluesy solo that built nicely, after which he returned to his vocal like a devoted lover.

Small deflations popped up early, though. Second song “When My Train Pulls In” cast a flattened reggae chank as a slow-moving locomotive and Clark played his solo as if his guitar was being uncooperative, and two songs later, his vocals never quite seemed to synch up to the jazzy loop that J. J. Johnson’s drums were setting up in “JPEG Raw.” And he periodically punctured the moods he was trying to create by interjecting comments like “I’m about to turn up” with a sassy lack of affect as “Blak And Blu” was about to shift from soft solo-electric strumming to full-band volume.

The lack of urgency that characterized Clark’s playing occasionally seeped into the band as a whole. Johnson kept time during “Hyperwave” as though he was missing a sprocket, but the others felt too distant behind him to lock into what he was doing and the song never snapped into focus as a result. And “The Healing” was what happens when accomplished players all show up and can’t muster any special chemistry together.

Even so, something shifted as the concert neared the end. The “Purple Rain”-esque “Triumph” was more dynamic, with a chorus that finally built, and it marked one of the first times Clark wasn’t playing as if he had somewhere else to be (something that had only been amplified by the number of times he left the stage as his band continued to chug along). The two-chord figure at the heart of “Blak And Blu” was enough for the band to latch onto and deepen as the song wound its way to a close. And they threw off light like a post-rock band in the spacious “You Saved Me,” where Clark finally stepped outside of himself in his solo as if he were taken by the expressive power of music, as opposed to simply being a man with a skill that he was engaging with.

The songs that Clark used to end his main set and his encore each showcased both his strengths and weaknesses in neat little packages. “Habits” was laid-back, breezy and as sparkling as a mountain spring, with a climactic solo that built up a head of steam, but its fragmented nature – the mood was jarred in its back half both by the dissonance of hard chords banged in a bolero rhythm and by a “Come back, my love” refrain repeated over a spidery math-rock figure – worked against it. And the jazz-funk of the closing “Funk Witch U” was crisp but too circular to keep things interesting for very long. It kept going even after Clark left the stage for the last time.

Setlist for Gary Clark Jr. at MGM Music Hall at Fenway — June 7, 2024

Maktub
When My Train Pulls In
Hyperwave
JPEG Raw
This Is Who We Are
The Healing
Alone Together
Feed The Babies
What About The Children
Triumph
Our Love
Blak And Blu
Bright Lights
Habits

ENCORE

You Saved Me
Funk Witch U

Marc Hirsh can be reached at [emailprotected] or on Bluesky @spacecitymarc.bsky.social.