miranda lambert

"Lemon Drop" and "Trailer For Rent" are my favorites.

Listened to this for the first time over the weekend. Very nice.

I kinda like Ashley Monroe's Satisfied as well. I absolutely love "Hank's Cadillac", and I like her slightly different take on Chamber's "Pony". Kasey sounds a bit too precious when she sings it, but Ashley gives it a slightly sassy feel that really works.

I saw Ashley sing "Has Anybody Ever Told You" on the Ten Out of Tenn tour in 2009. Absolute showstopper. Blew the other 9 off the stage.

last stretch of posts = v good reading

in "housewife's prayer", what's the washing machine a reference to in the second verse? it feels really sinister, especially connected to "i've been thinking about going off the deep end". if the first verse is about arson, what the second verse brings to mind is murder, and she'd need the washing machine to wash away the evidence.

i didn't realise a solo lambert album was also on the way, like others i wasn't really grabbed by the last one, but hell on heels is pretty special imo.

Yeah I just saw that today and was surprised to see it so soon after the Pistol Annies album.

wow lex, I hadn't thought about it that way. To me it sounds like something about hands being faded, due to not having a washing machine, but your reading is certainly more intriguing

also that housewife trick of putting babby on top of washing machine to calm it down? I dunno

My review: http://thequietus.com/articles/07029-pistol-annies-hell-on-heels-review

What exactly does she say after "All I need is a washing machine because..." - something about hands.

She then circles around to all her pills (and alcohol - self destructive) and her sexual frustration. A murder fantasy seems out of place in the middle. Seems like she'd be much more likely to kill herself.

Oh - and nice review!

I knew someone would call me out for my purposely contracting the time b/w Tupelo and Wilco but whatever. Toby Keith >>> Wilco

eh Uncle Tupelo & Toby Keith are up to very different things & you're just buying into the dumb media narrative that UT were "country" & thus that TK is a reasonable comparison. UT were trying to sound like Neil Young circa 1969 with a midwestern leftist lyrical sensibility: would it be clarifying to compare NY with TK unfavorably for the relative lack of clarity in his narratives?

to my ears UT sounds more like Comes a Time-era Neil Young if Young should enter this conversation at all.

you must be listening to the wrong UT album (yeah yeah maybe you're thinking "all of them"). maaaaybe the acoustic record has that sound but the guitars on Anodyne, particularly on Farrar's songs, rage, whereas Comes A Time, no matter how much I like it, is a dinner party album.

Tweedy was mostly a dog in UT, I'll give you that (also think a Wilco / TK comparison misses the point, but I guess you're writing to your audience)

Love the Pistol Annies album.

Maybe that's why the tunes dependent on the aural equivalent of the woman parts in Judd Apatow films are the weakest, the worst of which is 'Takin' Pills', an infrequent example of striking poses instead of commenting on them.

Exactly. Well done, Alfred. "Takin' Pills" is the only one I don't care for, and you pretty much nailed why.

Surprised no mention of "Beige," though, which I think is the album's best tune.

Surprised no mention of "Beige," though, which I think is the album's best tune.

I think it is too. Was discussed earlier, though.

it's weird; at work I usually have to listen to country music radio approx 3 hours a day. I've heard "Baggage Claim" a WHOLE lot, but haven't heard any Pistol Annies songs yet; is the industry giving this a proper push?

It debuted at #1 on the country chart and in the regular top ten; don't know about promotional efforts.

then they should be playing it on the radio here; maybe i'm just not listening closely enough...?

I don't know Lambert's label, and if Pistol Annies are on it too. Could the company be saving its promotional money for Lambert's album?

I don't know what they're putting into the Annie's album, but Ashley Monroe deserves to get some attention out of this project. It feels like the album just snuck up on us.

xp from what I can see they are both released by Columbia Nashville, so that's a distinct possibility, Alfred.

Fully expecting this new album to be amazing, based on what I've been hearing of it.

Listening to the new Miranda Lambert - it's great. I was scared when I heard "Baggage Claim" about a month ago - I didn't expect there to be much versatility on this album, but she's pulled it off. And she covers "Look At Miss Ohio" which instantly won me over.

An improvement on the last one? I found Revolution to be a bit of a disappointment, but the Pistol Annies album has me really excited for this one.

I'm not convinced yet. "All Kinds of Kinds" mentions a congressman who wears dresses on Friday night, "Mama's Broken Heart" wishes her daughter lived a life less dramatic than when JFK's Camelot went down in flames, but the rest sounds tentative – so far.

Revolution disappointed me as well. I love the Pistol Annies album as well, but it's definitely not a continuation of their album. She's let a lot of other songwriters in on this one, and she chose well. I'd say (after one listen) that it's better than Revolution. It feels like the kind of album you slowly sink into.

Revolution's problem was zealous mixing and sequencing, not songs.

I'm going to re-listen to Revolution and see if I notice the same problem with the sequencing and mixing. To be honest, I didn't give the album that many plays - got lost in the shuffle.

I really like the way she doesn't overwhelm us with attitude on Four the Record but it's still very much there.

Decent feature.

Will be buying this tomorrow

I should note that Revolution defines "sleeper hit"; after a tentative start it's quietly become her most successful album -- the one that made her a star. Two #1 singles more than a year after its release, another pair of top fifteens....

i like miranda lambert

yay! I knew you would.

i'm glad you're pleased

I dunno, after two listens this definitely feels like her least successful. It all seems fairly unfocused, though there is a side benefit of it sounding a lot looser and warmer than her other records. I just think the words fail her, and seeing the writing credits is illuminating in that regard; it makes a lot of sense that the overblown and soggy one she does with her husband is partially written by the guy in Lady Antebellum (who also co-wrote my least favorite song on Revolution). But even the ones she has a hand in are mushy and toothless.

Also she's always been good with covers, but does she add anything to "Look At Miss Ohio"? The original sounds defiant, and this one just sounds pretty and aimless.

Regardless of its issues, I do like the way she seems to swing on here. "All Kinds of Kinds" is kind of the perfect opener in its sense of expansiveness and inclusivity, "Mama's Broken Heart" is a total killer, "Dear Diamond" has a nice stark uneasiness, "Same Old You" and "Easy Living" sound totally vintage (in an alternate universe, the latter is a Bessie Smith track). I might be overrating "Nobody's Fool" because of the two songs it follows.

it's sort of telling that "Fine Tune" is her first song that deals explicitly with sexuality as a source of pleasure (as opposed to the rape and murder and cheatin'), and it's pretty goofy. Kind of endearing, but also kind of limp. Much like the record as a whole, but then again Revolution didn't hit me till I played it in a car, so maybe I should get on that.

The first song sounds like a creative writing exercise.

Nothing here matches the brevity and concentration of her self-penned "Trailer For Rent," released two months ago.

otoh "Oklahoma Sky" has her trying a Patsy Cline-esque slow, sultry style, which suggests she's still figuring out her range as a singer.

mama's broken heart!!!!!!

I dunno, guys, I'm in love with approximately half this record. I think "Nobody's Fool," "All Kinds of Kinds," "Mama's Broken Heart," and "Same Ol You" are brilliant. I also think "Fine Tune" is terrific and answers the question "what if Mark Linkous had lived to produce Miranda Lambert?" It also reminds me of the title track of the most recent Truckers album, weirdly enough, with the bluesy slide guitar throughout. It may be my favorite on the album. That weird Kim Deal vocal effect, especially so early in the album, is a bold move.

My least favorites are the 'mersh' ones - "Baggage Claim" (still not a fan of that one), "Safe" (sounds like something Carrie Underwood passed on), and the abominable "Fastest Girl In Town" (is this fucking Skid Row?).

I'm probably in the minority here, but I so think the highs on this album are higher than on the Pistol Annies album, which I loved at first, but taken as a whole now feels insubstantial and decidedly less than the sum of its (admittedly outstanding) parts.

I don't have the liner notes so I don't know who wrote what, but there is some great writing here. "Easy Living" is like a lost Keith Whitley tune.

I didn't know "Look At Miss Ohio" was a cover - that one's great too - who wrote that?

Anyway, I'm a Miranda superfan and this is my favorite of her four albums, if only for the songs I mentioned. I'll be coming back to this a lot. I just wish I didn't feel like she's perpetually torn between the Nashville hit machine and some Jamey Johnson-esque stab at 'classic country' reclamation. I guess the lack of airplay for Pistol Annies makes a case for her erring on the side of the former, if only from a careerist standpoint.

The trilogy in the middle is the best: "Easy Living, "Dear Diamond," "Same Ol' You."

this is better paced than revolution, which seemed so confused in the order of songs. there's like a third of that record that i'll never recall because of it.

not sure what i think of four the record otherwise except that "fine tune" is a motherfucker of a song and her version of "look at miss ohio" made me feel a lot of things.

Heard the whole thing this morning and it instantly felt more exciting that Revolution did. There is still some awkward sequencing (too many slower songs near the end), but a handful of really great songs.

The trilogy in the middle is the best: "Easy Living, "Dear Diamond," "Same Ol' You."

definitely, and I'd add "Mama's Broken Heart" too.

I didn't know "Look At Miss Ohio" was a cover - that one's great too - who wrote that?

Gillian Welch, and yes, it's a fantastic song, but unlike her other covers I don't think she adds anything to it.

I understand Ben Ratliff's frustration at how insistently Lambert pushes her I'm a Bad Girl image, but the disdain in this review is hard to take:

She’s not a virtuoso: an adequate singer but not a great one and, at least on Saturday, an inaudible guitarist in her band’s live mix. But her collaborations have helped create both her persona and her sound, which in country music terms is something between the current mainstream and 1990s alternative.

He's a bit too hard on her choice of cover songs too.

The freelancer for the Washington Post who reviewed her Baltimore gig from 2 nights before had a slightly different take-

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/click-track/post/in-concert-miranda-lambert-at-1st-mariner-arena/2012/01/27/gIQA5wmDWQ_blog.html

The redneck chanteuse: To some unknowable extent it’s pure shtick, but it matters not. She does it so well.

In fact, the flattest moment of Thursday’s 90-minute came as Lambert abandoned her persona and tried to go high-concept on the slow-jamming “Fine Tune.” With the video-screens having faded to black-and-white, Lambert picked up an antique microphone and retired to a fainting couch like some weary Hollywood goddess.