From rebellious 2005 breakout hit “Kerosene” to the deliciously cocky title track of 2014’s Platinum, Miranda Lambert has long presented herself as a spitfire: brash, outspoken, unapologetic and usually packing the blistering guitars to match. The picture painted by her hefty, sweeping sixth album, however, is something else entirely. This is, by and large, an introspective affair—lyrically if not always musically—that finds the songwriter taking a hard look at her life (including those well-documented wild-living impulses), emerging seemingly wiser but a good deal less self-assured.
Or at least, about half of it is. As with most double albums, there’s a tendency to want to cherry-pick and whittle down the tracklist to a more potent and digestible form. But it’s especially tempting in this case, given that roughly 50 percent of these two dozen songs come across as deeply felt, personal, nuanced and truthful without being overly confessional, whereas most of the remainder—including, notably, the four songs not written or co-written by Lambert—tend toward formula and cliché (the cutesy-dopey “For The Birds,” blandly anthemic “Keeper Of The Flame”), stock situations and stereotypes (grossly regressive empowerment-attempt “Tomboy”) and/or hokey, pandering country-fantasy tropes (are-you-serious throwback fluff “Covered Wagon.”)
It’s not that there’s anything wrong with these songs, per se (well, “Pink Sunglasses” is pretty insufferable)—they just seem like they belong to an entirely different album from the poignant and tremulous “Use My Heart,” deftly sketched, bleary-eyed self-appraisal “Vice,” the witty, winking self-portrait-by-proxy “We Should Be Friends” or even the deceptively jaunty “Ugly Lights” (an AA testimonial in all but name). If the first decade of Lambert’s career was an exuberantly reckless, hell-raising party, Weight is the inexorable comedown: a graceful and timely maturation that might just take a little editing to come through clearly.
—K. Ross Hoffman
