Miranda Lambert Crazy Ex-Girlfriend CD

Personnel: Mike Wrucke (guitar, banjo, background vocals); Randy Scruggs (guitar, mandolin); Jay Joyce, Waddy Wachtel, Richard Rodney Bennett (guitar); Hank Singer (fiddle); Chuck Leavell (keyboards); Chad Cromwell (drums); Eric Darken (percussion); Natalie Hemby, Buddy Miller (background vocals).
Audio Mixer: Mike Wrucke.
Liner Note Author: Judy Forde Blair.
Recording information: East Iris Studio, Nashville, TN; Omni Sound Studios, Nashville, TN; Wrucke's House Studio, Nashville, TN.
Photographer: Jack Guy.
Unknown Contributor Role: Jim Hoke.
With her first hit single "Kerosene," Miranda Lambert introduced a wild-eyed country gal persona that suddenly made supposed bad girl Gretchen Wilson seem about as staid and conservative as Reba McEntire. Lambert's follow-up album, 2007's CRAZY EX GIRLFRIEND, maintains that image: In the title track and first single, Lambert herself is the title character, addressing her former flame's new girlfriend in slightly unhinged terms. The equally crazed opening track "Gunpowder and Lead" is even more threatening. Elsewhere, however, Lambert shows a softer side, performing covers of Emmylou Harris's "Easy From Now On" and Gillian Welch's "Dry Town" with sensitivity and emotional depth. Lambert is a more capable singer than her image suggests, and CRAZY EX GIRLFRIEND opens up her musical persona nicely.
Miranda Lambert didn't win the first Nashville Star in 2003, but she sure is the first bona fide star the televised music competition has produced, as her stellar 2007 sophomore album, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt. Taking her cue from the vengeful spurned woman of "Kerosene," her hit debut single, Lambert has built her second album around a tough-chick persona, something that may be clear from the very title of the album, but this isn't a one-dimensional record by any stretch. Sure, she plays the crazy ex-girlfriend of the title track -- stalking her beau and his new girl to the local bar, which she promptly starts tearing apart -- but that's hardly the extent of her hell-raising here. She takes righteous revenge on a guy who slapped her around on the rocking opener, "Gunpowder and Lead" ("he wants a fight, well now he's got one"), she's stranded without booze in a "Dry Town," and she breaks hearts left and right on the surging, hard-edged "Down," while she searches in vain for a good fling on "Guilty in Here," where she wonders what became of "all the boys that only want one thing." That line reveals that Lambert has a sly sense of humor, but she's not joking around: these are lean, hard-hitting, tuneful country songs, delivered with a classic outlaw strut and a vicious modern punch. If Lambert has a thin, almost girlish voice, she's hardly girly -- there's an edge to her delivery that leaves no doubt that she possess nerves of steel. But for as strong as she sounds on the plentiful rockers here, Lambert also lets her guard down on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, as she as she soaks her "Love Letters" with tears, sweetly sighs in "Desperation," and sadly wishes she was "More Like Her" as she looks on as her ex-lover returns to his old love. This last song provides a neat flip side to the rampaging title track, which also hints at this album's complexity. There are songs that are larger than life, songs that are achingly intimate, and they all add up to rich artistic statement of purpose that is also a hell of a lot of fun. Miranda Lambert knows exactly who she is as a musician, and nowhere is that clearer than how the three covers here -- Gillian Welch co-wrote "Dry Town," Carlene Carter and Susanna Clark penned "Easy from Now On" (which Emmylou Harris popularized), and Patty Griffin authored "Getting Ready" (also heard on her own 2007 album, Children Running Through) -- blend seamlessly with Lambert's eight originals. Every one of the 11 songs shares the same spirit and Lambert's is strong enough of a writer to hold her own with such heavy-hitters, possessedRolling Stone (p.98) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[S]he tops herself on what will likely remain the country album of the year....Smoking."
Rolling Stone (p.112) - Included in Rolling Stone's "50 Top Albums of the Year 2007".
Entertainment Weekly (p.139) - "The non-violent side of small-town yearnings is here too....She never stoops to teardrops-on-my-guitar banalities." -- Grade: A-