Music Review: Miranda Lambert’s ‘Postcards from Texas’ is joyful road trip across her home state

NEW YORK (AP) — Miranda Lambert’s 10th studio album begins with a plucky honky-tonk stomper, full of folksy imagery and a jaunty vibraslap sound:

“Well I met an armadillo / Out in Amarillo / And he asked me for a light,” Lambert’s voice swings, “I said a where ya goin’ / He said ‘I don’t really know’ / And I said, ‘Brother I’ve been there twice.’”

It might be an outlier, for listeners expecting a collection more in line with the album’s lead single, the classic rock-channeling “Wranglers,” but it’s also the perfect tone-setter. Across the 14-track release, Lambert aims to deliver sometimes-traditional country with a lot of heart.

Throughout, “Postcards From Texas” is a sonic road trip across Lambert’s home state — from the steel guitar-led ballad “Looking Back on Luckenbach” to the funny, trash-talking divorce anthem “Alimony,” with its not-so-thinly veiled lyrical geography.

“I called that lawyer up in Dallas,” she sings in the chorus. “If you’re gonna leave me in San Antone / Remember the alimony,” the last word teased out to turn “Alamo” into “alimony.” It’s such a rewarding lyric reversal, it feels almost prototypical — as if plucked from some great country music songbook instead of written into it.

Lambert’s voice is where “Postcards From Texas” finds its cohesion, from dreamy ballads, like “Way Too Good At Breaking My Heart” and country-rock swagger, like on “B—— On the Sauce (Just Drunk)” to classic covers, like in the case of “Living on the Run,” from David Allan Coe’s 1976 album, “Longhaired Redneck.”

Lambert co-produced the album with Jon Randall, and recorded the entirety of it at Austin, Texas’ Arlyn Studios, the first time since she was 18 that she’s recorded a full album in her home state. In those days, long before becoming a stalwart of Nashville’s Music Row, it’s easy to imagine she wasn’t thinking about a homecoming — especially in a state where those considered Texas country greats are overwhelmingly male.

At this stage in her career, Lambert doesn’t have anything to prove — and that’s one of many reasons why “Postcards from Texas” is a ride that works.