(EBM) Having decamped to Austin's legendary Arlyn Recording Studios to distill her Lone Star coming of age, triple GRAMMY winner and Academy of Country Music Entertainer of the Year Miranda Lambert savored the rhythms, players and variety of styles that populate Postcards from Texas. The 14-track project moves from yearning ballads to discordant rockers, sparkling acoustic songs and steel guitar-soaked laments, showing what makes music from the Lone Star State so tangy and unforgettable.
Pre-order for the album arriving Sept. 13 starts now. To celebrate, there's only one thing for the winningest woman in ACM history to do: drop more music and kick up some dust on her way to deliver the full picture! With the brooding, woman scorned "Wranglers" and the chiming rejoinder "Dammit Randy" already stoking anticipation, Lambert makes a hard right... to the dance floor with "Alimony".
With a descending electric guitar part and some kick drum and hi-hat rim snaps, Lambert devours the hilarious honky tonk of the industrial shuffle "Alimony" to amp up the tone for her first album for Republic Records. A jaunty tumbling swagger that's long on bar-room piano, the pre-chorus boasts, "I called that lawyer up in Dallas, the one who's livin' in that palace / So I know he's good at winnin', if you think there's somethin' that you're missin'..."
"We were out in my barn; I was showing Shane and Natalie the horses, and I asked if he had any other titles," Lambert remembers of the day she, Shane McAnally and Natalie Hemby hit a creative streak. "He said he had one, and I was like, 'What is it? Because your last one was 'Looking Back on Luckenbach,' which I didn't think you could top. He said, 'Well, 'If you're gonna leave me in San Antone, remember the Alamo-neeeee...'' Natalie and I were like, 'Alright, Shane! Stop showing off.'
"We went back to the house and got the guitars," Lambert continues, "and I specifically was like, 'I want a shuffle, man.' I love to shuffle so much, and this record needed a shuffle! I knew I wanted one in my set, because I haven't done one in a while - and everybody loves a shuffle."
Unrepentantly bouncing, the track is pure beer-joint country. Beyond warning about the consequences of the buckle-polishing that dissolves marriages, "Alimony" draws on Lambert's childhood. Laughing, she offers, "My parents were private investigators in Dallas, Texas who worked a ton of divorce cases in highfalutin parts of town, so this wasn't hard to write. I'd heard about it my whole life.
"And once we had the line - If you're gonna leave me in San Antone, remember the alimony - we were off! We used every Texas metaphor we could come up with on purpose; we wanted to take something kind of sh*tty and put some humor back in it. I mean, the guy gets out pretty easy if all he does is move back in with his mom."
Working with GRAMMY-winning songwriter/producer Jon Randall, they assembled a musical dream team. Jedd Hughes and Ethan Ballinger's electric guitars tangled with Texas legend Bukka Allen's barrelhouse piano, while the rhythm section of Rachel Loy on bass and Conrad Choucroun's on drums created a banging barn-door rhythm to propel "Alimony" with abandon.
Tongue firmly in cheek, the latest track from Postcards from Texas delivers on Lambert's wink'n'nudge approach to love, life and the pursuit of happiness on one's own terms. Self-determination is a key piece of being a Texan, as is a sense of humor, and Lambert delivers.
Postcards from Texas Track List:
Produced by Miranda Lambert & Jon Randall; songwriters in parentheses
Armadillo (Aaron Raitiere, Jon Decious, Park Twomey)
Dammit Randy (Miranda Lambert, Brendan McLoughlin, Jon Randall)
Looking Back on Luckenbach (Miranda Lambert, Shane McAnally, Natalie Hemby)
Santa Fe feat. Parker McCollum (Miranda Lambert, Jesse Frasure, Jessie Jo Dillon, Dean Dillon)
January Heart (Brent Cobb, Neil Medley)
Wranglers (Audra Mae, Evan McKeever, Ryan Carpenter)
Run (Miranda Lambert)
Alimony (Miranda Lambert, Natalie Hemby, Shane McAnally)
I Hate Love Songs (Miranda Lambert, Jack Ingram, Jon Randall)
No Man's Land (Miranda Lambert, Luke Dick)
Bitch On The Sauce (Miranda Lambert, Jaren Johnston)
Way Too Good At Breaking My Heart (Miranda Lambert, Jon Randall, Jesse Frasure, Jenee Fleenor)
Wildfire (Miranda Lambert, Jack Ingram, Jon Randall)
Living On The Run (David Allen Coe, Jimmy L. Howard)
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