come anticipate Miranda Lambert's new double album The Weight of These Wings

she's the best recordmaker of the last decade, no question

and I'll keep calling TWOTW her best until I'm blue, but, yeah, none of her records approaches "meh" except FTR.

Kerosene's the one that keeps knocking me out. She had found her voice so soon!

Somehow the deceptive simplicity in Swift's songwriting makes me rate her higher among their generation but really it's neck and neck.

I think "Revolution" would be my pick but crazy ex-girlfriend, platinum all floor me. The Pistol Annies from last year was also right up there.

With Weight, there's a degree of Dave Cobb-ness that puts me away but I should really go back to it.

Yes to Tequila Does and all the praise for TWOTW

i love "bluebird" "pretty bitchin" and "tequila does" off this record

based on structure i feel like this is looking a bit like platinum

"Dark Bar" has a danger she's rarely attempted.

aside from "way too pretty for prison" and "locomotive" this album sounded pretty great to me... the final 4 songs make for a predictably wonderful closing stretch

"Settling Down," "Fire Escape," and "Track Record" are my favorites.

Yeah love "Track Record"

followed beautifully by "dark bars"

"dark bars" is really great... the line about lifeguards

yesss. "how dare you love" is a stunner too

"dark bars" is so good

you're welcome!

This needs its own thread

it's a really gentle production for such a sad song and more texturally interesting than it lets on at first

"Track Record," another chapter in the "Kerosene/Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" book, gets me with its jangly guitars -- it's those songs played by Tom Petty.

i really like the opening & closing clusters of songs on Wildcard.

"Dark Bars," yes; "White Trash" meh.

I like "White Trash!" (I see Luke Dick and Natalie Hembie both wrote on it... to circle back to my posts here)

(I should mention that "Man, I Feel Like a Woman" is in my all-time top-10 -- so big, unabashedly corny country-pop songs are right up my avenue.)

Dick & Hemby also wrote on the excellent "Highway Vagabond," track 2 on The Weight of These Wings (to hew to the thread topic)

I whittled this down to a 10 song playlist and it’s perfect

finally getting around to this

man, the guitar tones on "mess with my head"

(i only caught maybe two of the singles so most of this is new to me)

Well, good. You can decide whether "Locomotive" and "Bluebird" and "Settling Down" are as good as I think.

"locomotive" and "bluebird" are amazing ("bluebird" was one of the ones i'd heard)

oh so was "locomotive" actually but it grew on me heavily, generally i'll listen to her sing over any overdriven wall of guitars

c/o the Rosanna Cash thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihyHTKqBU5Q

basically love every song on this except for "way too pretty for prison" which could've spent a little more time in the song incubator

as an album it's a little all over the place and weirdly-paced like platinum and revolution, which are two excellent albums so i'm not exactly complaining

she's the goat

Best of the decade.

Way to pretty for prison surprised me - it’s markedly inferior to Stripes by Brandy Clark.

It's on par with Goodbye Earl.

“Pretty Bitchin’” is such an awesome personal anthem.

listened this morning. first impression: seems to get better in the second half. some of the uptempo or rockier ones were misses but the ballads were uniformly good, some truly great

I was not expecting "Track Record" to sound like New Order!

Closer to Tom Petty to my ears (and "Mess With My Head"!).

re "Dark Bars" this seems right

it's a really gentle production for such a sad song and more texturally interesting than it lets on at first

― J0rdan S., Thursday, November 7, 2019 4:01 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

what strikes me in particular is the restraint of her singing. Compare it with "Over You", for instance, where she sings "you went away" big & loud to express her loss. "Dark Bars" communicates in subtler ways, through her twangs, through her enunciation of words with the letter "r" throughout (in "bars", "lifeguard", "hearts", "hard"): soft, almost mushy? but broken? it's mesmerizing me.

What fascinates me about her evolution is how she saves the sentimentality for the rockers while her ballads are getting more fatalistic and in some cases terrifying -- her vocal choices, that is.

I'll have to give this another listen, because on my first try it sounded just OK but nothing particularly special (at least not the way "The Weight of These Wings" popped out at me).

yes her vocal choices are fascinating. just listening to "Track Record" and "Dark Bars" over and over and over again.

"Dark Bars" is a Liz Rose co-write, I just learned.

as is "Track Record"

the little documentary on apple music about this album is not incredibly insightful but it does have some good video

I don't have the gene that lets me enjoy some of the shtickier upbeat songs but the closing stretch is killer

Finally listening to this now. If I could make one plea to the gods of modern pop country it would be this: please make the guitar solos sound more like James Burton (or at least Eddy Shaver) and less like CC Deville. Brad Paisley is probably the only guy from this generation of country stars who understands the role guitar should play in this music. Half of the (admittedly unnecessary) solo breaks here sound like Dial MTV circa 1988.

I like "White Trash," "It All Comes Out In The Wash," and "Track Record," but some of these songs sound like cuts Pat Benatar would have given the gas face, and I don't remember thinking that about any of her previous albums.

The Bon Jovification of so much contemporary country doesn't always leave a lot of room for chicken-pickin' and guitar twang.

hmm, you make a point there

I like most of the solos *shrug*. I've heard worse on Eric Church's The Outsiders.

I take your point about Paisley, though. And Jason Isbell does fine work on The Highwomen album.

not important question: why does she cut out the two utterances of the word "pretty" in the last verse? just for fun? or am i missing a reference or a joke?