An audacious country renegade with a straight-shooting lyrical
style, Miranda Lambert is worlds removed from your average
cookie-cutter country singer. As she herself puts it, “just down the
middle plain” has never been her style. Revolution, her third
CD, finds Lambert taking an if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it approach.
She’s kept the same producers and musicians as last time around, but
turns the country twang up a notch. There’s an immediacy to
Revolution, with its striking guitar hooks and even more
striking melodies, that gives the CD a live-in-the-studio feel. Whether
she’s pining for the gypsy life in the rootsy “Airstream Song” or
deconstructing John Prine’s “That’s the Way the World Goes ‘Round,”
which begins with a country twang and builds to a punkish frenzy,
Lambert sounds supremely at ease. She’s all over the map mood-wise too:
from the wistful nostalgia of “The House That Built Me” to the
love-gone-bad (and maybe even deadly) theme of “Sin for a Sin”
(co-written with boyfriend Blake Shelton). Easily one of country
music’s most gifted artists, Lambert is at the top of her game here.
— Tierney Smith
This article appears in Oct 7-13, 2009.
