"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, the LP 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. And she can sing anything."

From the Dusty in Memphis torch of unbridled desire igniting "Love is a Fire" to the minor-key memories in "Bad Car," the lush slink of wishing to unknow "Can We Be Strangers" to the falter and dignity of "Apologies" unheard, Clark embraces grown up stuff – and it's played for emotional tenor/gravitas it deserves. These 11 songs are meant to create an arc to live, love, feel and even fail on the way to one's true destiny. For Clark, the notion of investing in life, in facing the truth provides the impetus to embrace the good in the rough stuff. With brazen cheekiness "Who Broke Whose Heart" stacks the realities of how things fall apart, but celebrates the love that was being all that truly matters. A saucy melody buoys every detail, recrimination and misstep, the stuff that never endures when the dust settles.