miranda lambert

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.

well, they both agree "Fine Tune" as a performance number sucked.

Whenever I listen to her music - all rock critic talk about "Bad Girl schtick" aside - I get a pretty solid suspicion that she has connections to the hillbilly underworld.

New Pistol Annies song coming out on the Hunger Games soundtrack: "Run Daddy Run".

oh awesome, who knew a t-bone burnett produced soundtrack would maybe be my album of the year

n/m, it purportedly also contains arcade fire and the decemberists

Oh, goody. Now I don't have to buy the fucking thing.

To Soulseek!!

"run daddy run" is kind of amazing. tense and terrified.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=its-921iBQs

billed as miranda lambert ft. pistol annies, it seems

LOVE THIS

but no @ the name change

not sure its a name change, its from the hunger games soundtrack and i'm guessing they did that just to draw in more people with the wide-reach approach

so great.

Last night's WMZQ radio fest at big outdoor shed Jiffy Lube Live, down the road from Washington DC featured Miranda as the headliner and the Pistol Annies on the bill. I wasn't able to make it, but my gf went and reported:

Miranda was great. She only played about 5 songs with her girl group and the rest were just her with male band members, including her cover of Rock and Roll Hootchie Coo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olk1dTcFP_U

station back home's playing "Over You" again & again still & it's caught me. She's singing differently on it than on the first records or the Pistol Annie's record (haven't listened to Revolution closely enough yet to compare since it sounds so gross & I completely missed the singles on the radio). (but compare the ACM take above.) The best part is how the song builds up for a massive climax & she pulls away: a sock right in the gut every time.

New material?

Miranda Lambert is certainly a tough woman, though, and Us Weekly, which features the two on its new cover, does hint at some trouble in paradise.

She’s so worried, allegedly, that flirty Blake Shelton may stray that she keeps a close eye on his texts and tweets! She has full access. All the time.

“[Miranda] knows [Blake] comes off as flirty. She questions him at times and asks about certain girls. The rumors are hard for her to hear,” a source said.

In June, Miranda, 29, told the magazine that she’s checked out some of the people that Blake, 36, follows on social media and “they’re all hot girls!”

No word if Cady Groves was/is one of the people in question.

Miranda, who is apparently quoted in the cover story, says she keeps her husband in line by demanding full-time access to his handheld technology.

“Either one of us can always look at each other’s phone, and we know each other’s passcode,” she adds. “I like to check his direct [Twitter] messages.”

pretty sure she tweeted that they are almost done with the new Pistols album

It's coming out in like2 weeks

"automatic" is a pretty awful song, huh

like, there's value in the familiar blah blah blah but not this kind of reactionary nostalgia

hardly an indelible hook, either

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=9751

I haven't hated this song the couple of times I've heard bits of it, but I was disappointed, hearing it from start to finish, that it wasn't an entire song dedicated to driving stick.

yeah i basically don't like "automatic" at all, i heard it on the radio and had to switch it off not even halfway through

Just listening to it today and I kinda like it, but I get why someone wouldn't. I just love the idea that there's a sequenced synth clicking along in the background like it's no big deal.

David Nail? (Ad.) There's a David Nail?

Was hoping I'd want to defend the song, but it's nothing special on first listen.

guys, do we like the new song, "Vice"?

i like it.

We discussed it some in the Rolling Country thread. I love its stately build.

I love it a lot

she is my favorite songwriter of self-destructive impulses

also i saw her in concert last night and relistened to the albums in preparation. a couple are a little baggy for my tastes, but she has just so many solid songs. impressive!

she performed "bathroom sink" last night btw <3 <3 <3

I like the frazzled guitar work in "Vice." This is kind of what I wished Elizabeth Cook's Exodus of Venus sounded like. But I think the record would've been better with a bridge.

xp uuuugghh i almost went to that show but talked myself out of driving to MD on a weekday. "bathroom" sink is my fave; didn't think it had been showing up on the setlist!

"vice" is great despite ending kinda anticlimactically. sometimes i find myself hitting repeat immediately after the last verse.

I talked myself out of driving up for the show too. Oh well.

Don't sleep on the Pistol Annies albums (Lambert recently told a concert audience that a new set's in the works), or Ashley Monroe's The Blade(her best) or Angaleena Presley's American Middle Class(her only, also pretty good).

Look for her Austin City Limits shows online: in the first, fairly early on, she and band left Gretchen Wilson's road-jaded/weary-sounding run-through in the dust; second was all-Lambert, I think, with her cranked-up combo now something of a guitar army, though her voice kept it country (also on ballads). And Pistol Annies did a mini-set in the middle, just gliding through. No idea what her presentation is like now, though she's got even more good songs now, and suspect she's still shifting gears often enough.

https://twitter.com/mirandalambert/status/775801099995455488

the weight of these wings, out november 18

BEEP

I really like Vice

Co-write and duet with Steve Earle ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNAAPOQ0Fkk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQnJ8b1iXyk

i really liked this song on that last green day album and miranda's harmonies are lovely here

I was gonna revive this thread on the anniversary of the release of her best album.

It's the anniversary of Kerosene? Cool