Moderation is the name of the game on the straightforward
Postcards from Texas
,
Miranda Lambert
's first album to be recorded entirely in her home state since her eponymous debut. (It's also her first for
Big Loud
and
Republic Records
after nearly two decades with
Sony
.) It's a back-porch-on-Sunday-type album in which even the more empowering, riled songs -- like "Bitch on the Sauce (Just Drunk)," "Wranglers," or honky tonker "Alimony" -- go down honey-smooth amidst lazing rhymes like armadillo and Amarillo, "Looking Back on Luckenbach," and turns of pun like "Remember the Alimo-ny." Co-produced by
Lambert
Jon Randall
, the return home involved a plethora of collaborators, including duet partner
Parker McCollum
("Santa Fe"), backing vocalist
Ashley Monroe
("January Heart"), and
's husband,
Brendan McLoughlin
, who collected his first songwriting credit ("Dammit Randy"). The generous 14-song set closes on a representative cover of the
David Allan Coe
song "Living on the Run" in which
"loved me a woman in Tennessee" (instead of "killed"). Her worst-charting solo album since her self-released debut as well, it was still a Billboard 200 Top 30 hit. ~ Marcy Donelson