Miranda Lambert ‘Postcards From Texas’ Overview: Nation Star Goes House

You’d need to look fairly far and extensive to search out anybody in music who has been as constantly good or eternally fulfilling as Miranda Lambert. Virtually 20 years into her run, she’s outlined her profession by at all times going her personal approach, each musically and lyrically. Her ninth solo set was recorded in her native Texas with assist from friends and longtime collaborators like Brent Cobb, Natalie Hemby, and Jack Ingram, and the album’s co-producer Jon Randall. Postcards From Texas doesn’t have as many style swerves as Lambert generally delivers. It’s an easy, fortunately down-home nation file, an album proudly in love with custom, and each bit as enjoyable and heartfelt as you’d anticipate from one among nation’s freest spirits.

Recorded in Austin, the album goes from the unapologetic honky-tonk of “Bitch on the Sauce,” to the tender Seventies country-rock of the beautiful spotlight “Method Too Good at Breaking My Coronary heart,” to the dusky acoustic ballad “No Man’s Land.” Probably the most memorable moments are classic bird-flipping, trash-talking Lambert bangers. “Alimony” is one among her funniest songs ever: “If you happen to like livin’ at your mama’s home/And drinkin’ Milwaukee’s Finest on a hand-me-down sofa/You’re gonna love how this all works out,” she cracks with glee. “Damnit Randy,” co-written with Randall and Lambert’s husband Brendan McLoughlin, is a rigorously detailed dressing-down of an appreciative ex. “Armadillo” is a tall story by which Lambert comes residence from staying out all evening with a narrative about having her night hijacked by a pistol-packing, weed-puffing, beer-toting “armadillo from Amarillo” — “Don’t try to name my bluff/Honey you may’t make shit up,” she sings, nearly actually making that shit up.

All these songs play with traditional honky-tonk tropes, however the one factor that feels merely professional forma is “Wranglers,” by which she places her stamp on nation’s custom of “she burned his stuff” songs with classic-rock swagger. Paying homage to native heroes, she will be as laidback and alluring as Willie Nelson or as tough-minded as Steve Earle. However the album by no means seems like a tribute to something aside from her personal unbiased muse.

A few of the LP’s nicer moments are earnest and reflective — like “January Coronary heart, with its contented relationship realism steeped in horizon-wide guitar magnificence — and gorgeously nostalgic (the beautiful “Trying Again on Luckenbach” and “Sante Fe,” a duet with Texas singer-songwriter Parker McCollum). She finishes Postcards From Texas honoring custom with a heel-kicking cowl of David Allan Coe’s Nineteen Seventies anthem “Residing on the Run,” one outlaw honoring one other.