Brandy Clark long has been a lauded pen among Nashville’s ink well, landing hits with chart toppers such as Kacey Musgraves and Miranda Lambert (among others) while also handily stepping out front with her own records woven from classic country music clarity and contemporary heart-on-the-sleeve fearlessness.

On her self-titled fourth album, Clark is as powerful as ever, showcasing stunning personal narratives alongside blood-and-bone ballads that rise above to survey fresh angles bound by neither convention nor cliche.

“I think that’s always the challenge of a songwriter and a singer,” said Clark, who on her latest release maneuvers deliberately through tales of heartbreak, homicide and home. “There are songs that aren’t hard for me to find a way into — like ‘Take Mine.’ I wrote that for my godson. And ‘Dear Insecurity’ (which won the 2023 Grammy for Best Americana Performance), I wrote that about my own insecurities.”

Clark will join Mary Chapin Carpenter on Thursday for a performance at Pikes Peak Center.

Clark’s self-titled album was produced by Brandi Carlile. Clark and Carlile (dubbed BC Squared) collaborated on two tracks that would ultimately appear on the deluxe edition of Clark’s 2020 album “Your Life is a Record.”

“Working with Brandi Carlile, another artist, was a very different experience for me as an artist myself,” Clark said. “The thing that Brandi was really good at — I mean, she’s great at several things — but one of the big things was holding a mirror up in front of my face and saying, ‘OK, is this really you? And if it’s not really you, what’s your way into it?’’’

Clark calls her latest collection “the rawest version of me at this point in my life,” and though a few critics and fans might have been surprised by some of her more bare-knuckled moments, this isn’t a reinvention but a live-edge cut of the songwriter.

“I’ve been in the world of trying to write commercial songs. I’ve never been really great at writing commercial songs. A lot of people think I am because I’ve had a few hits, but overall, I’ve had a lot more noncommercial songs,” she said. “But you get into that mindset of a certain, for lack of a better word, formula. And Brandi doesn’t know that formula. So for me to bring in some structure and her to bring in some nonstructure, I think we landed in a really great place.”