omophagia's Full Review: Kerosene by Miranda Lambert
Like anyone with self-delusions of breaking into the world of entertainment criticism, I strive for a certain degree of "professional" objectivity. I make a point, for instance, not to review any albums by my all-time favorite band, R.E.M., knowing that I likely could not give their music an impersonal context that would be meaningful for anyone else to read. Nor do I bother writing reviews of albums by Martina McBride, knowing both that the intense vitriol I feel for her dishonest, exploitative, hateful "country music's social conscience" conceit would result in writing that both divulged more personal information than I'm comfortable including in a music review and that exceeded the epinions content filter's allowance for profanity.
It isn't just important to legitimate attempts at criticism to own up to one's biases-- it's essential. Particularly dangerous-- and increasingly common, thanks to the inherent populism of internet "criticism"-- are the efforts of fanboys, individuals incapable of separating their blind devotion to a subject or artist from the actual merits of an album, film, novel, or what have you. Given the vehemence with which fanboys will defend the often indefensible-- check the comment section on Walter Chaw's archived review of The Phantom Menace for perhaps the definitive illustration-- their efforts often devolve into personal attacks and failed intellectual bullying tactics. And whenever someone caves in to the pressure of a collective fanboy front, the results aren't pretty: they're Alien Vs. Predator.
The point of this? I think I'm kind of in love with Miranda Lambert. Not "in love" in that writing-letters-to-Jodie-Foster sense or in the going-to-set-up-a-geocities-site sense. But "in love" in the sense that attempting to review her debut album, Kerosene, places a significant strain on my would-be objectivity. Based on the album's lead single, "Me And Charlie Talking," I knew before I ever picked up Kerosene that the odds were overwhelmingly in favor of my loving it. And that, to my utter lack of surprise, the album fully lived up to the lofty expectations I had for it. But, despite my misgivings that whatever praise I offer the album might be misconstrued as the ravings of a fanboy, here I am, writing up a full review of Kerosene. Because I love it.
To preempt accusations of shallowness, I admit: Miranda Lambert is a beautiful young woman. She looks like Sarah Michelle Gellar, but with a far less unfortunate nose and with a girl-next-door thing that's the result of her not having been famous long enough to have all of the comments about how gorgeous she is have gone to her head but you can tell that on some level she still knows that it's true and, Christ, that only makes her that much hotter. On the inside cover of Kerosene's liner notes, she's wearing a shirt that says, "I Rode The Bull At Gilleys," which is the kind of wardrobe stunt that major labels attempt to pass off as street credibility-- for instance, the "speaks volumes about her marketing" of having Illinois native Gretchen Wilson wearing a Confederate flag shirt on the front page of her website-- except that her aggressive songwriting on Kerosene suggests that there's a very good chance that Lambert earned that shirt.
Okay, so she's hot. Which doesn't hurt (see also: Willis, Kelly. Merritt, Tift.) and which is increasingly an expectation for women in country music (see also: Krauss, Allison. Roberts, Julie.). And, while I could launch into a tirade about the genre's conservative gender politics, I've already dug myself into a sufficiently deep hole here. Miranda Lambert is hot. But that isn't why I love her or her album.
What I love most about Lambert and about Kerosene is the fundamental hope that they represent for mainstream country music. Returning again to Gretchen Wilson as a counterexample, Lambert exudes the kind of artistic integrity and, perhaps even more significantly, the authenticity so frequently lacking in the music that comes out of Nashville these days. She may have made her first big step into the scene on Nashville Star, the USA Network's country-focused answer to American Idol, also notable for allowing its contestants to play their own instruments and expecting that they can compose their own songs, but using a televised talent contest as her break in no way diminishes the potency of her proper debut.
Critics who fail to understand the country genre spent the bulk of 2004 making entirely unfounded comparisons between Wilson, every bit the cipher Faith Hill is but with a far more insidious marketing campaign, and Loretta Lynn. It's a point I've made elsewhere, but, to take nothing away from Lynn's tremendous gifts as a songwriter, I still consider her to be the second-best American songwriter, behind an at-peak Dolly Parton. Parton's songwriting is intensely personal, emotional, and evocative, and she grounds her songs in her natural vernacular. The economy of her language gives her lyrics as much strength as does her authenticity. When she's on her game, there's no way to accuse Dolly Parton of "putting on airs," though her best songs certainly support academic criticism. That she possesses an unrivaled gift for melody and one of the best voices in popular music simply closes the deal. Dolly Parton is a national treasure, and she's every bit as important to the country genre as are Hank Williams and Johnny Cash.
So, this is not a comparison that I make lightly: Miranda Lambert evokes a young Dolly Parton.
Needless to say, I find this to be cause for excitement.
For all of the talk of Wilson's "Redneck Woman" persona, it should be noted that she shared songwriting credit on just six of the tracks on her godawful debut album, Here for the Party. And that, considering how closely she worked with Big & Rich in writing those songs, there are legitimate questions-- in that "there are seven songwriters credited on 'Me Against The Music,' so how much did Britney Spears really help?" way-- as to how much Wilson contributed to her own album. Firing back, then, is Lambert, who takes solo songwriting credit on six of Kerosene's twelve tracks and who shares the songwriting credit, most often with Travis Howard and her father, Rick Lambert, on another five. Howard wrote the album's lone cover. And, with this collection, Kerosene establishes Lambert right out of the gate as a truly first-rate songwriter. There's a fearlessness and a candor in her writing that's too often lacking in mainstream country, and she embraces working class idioms in a way that's natural, rather than pandering (refer to Jo Dee Messina's wretched current single, "My Give a D@mn's Busted," for why that's an important distinction).
The album opens with its title track, one of Lambert's solo outings, which is almost shocking in its aggressive couplets: "Now I don't hate the one who left / You can't hate someone who's dead / He's out there holdin' onto someone / I'm holdin' up my smoking gun / I'll find somewhere to lay my blame / The day she changes her last name." For one thing, the use of slant rhyme to emphasize the unexpected twist at the end of the second line is the kind of sophisticated, poetic maneuver that is Parton's stock and trade, and the song as a whole flies in the face of the hyperglycemic sentimentality that is typically expected of women in country music-- and is entirely unapologetic in its tone. "Kerosene"'s refrain, after all, is, "I'm giving up on love / 'Cause love's givin' up on me."
Elsewhere on the album, Lambert addresses the uniquely Southern problem of "getting' above your raisin'" with a remarkable insight-- particularly for a 21 year-old-- on "What About Georgia?," again showing her comfort with emotionally loaded material. "Are you the man you thought you'd be / By the time that you turned 33? / Are you still a bullet in your daddy's gun?" Even more interesting is that, despite a voice that's admittedly "girlish," she's able to deliver such lines with the world-weary conviction they demand.
The high point of Kerosene, though, remains that glorious first single, "Me And Charlie Talking," which is possibly the best-written, purest country song outside of the material on Patty Loveless' Mountain Soul to come along this decade. Lambert, with her father and additional co-writer Heather Little, take the somewhat clichéd trope of the lost childhood sweetheart and, miraculously, explore it with unparalleled depth. The hook doesn't hit until the end of the chorus, but it's preceded by such exceptional writing that its gut-check emotional wallop isn't diminished. "So we treat our love like a firefly / Like it only gets to shine for a little while / Catch it in a mason jar with holes in the top / And run like hell to show it off / Oh, promises we made when we'd go walkin' / But that's just me and Charlie talkin'." Again, it's in the use of natural, unforced idiom that makes the line ring true, to say nothing of the firefly simile that's just about the most remarkable thing to hit country radio since Pam Tillis name-checked William Faulkner. Wilson tries to gain genre credibility by mentioning Charlie Daniels; Lambert does it by using "mason jar"s in the middle of a literary device. Again: I think I love Miranda Lambert.
If the remainder of the songwriting on Kerosene doesn't quite measure up to "Me and Charlie Talking," it probably isn't fair to expect that of a 21 year-old on her debut. Lambert doesn't write ballads quite as well as she writes uptempo songs. There's no "I Hope You Dance" treacle on here, but "Greyhound Bound for Nowhere" is bogged down by some less-than-inspired psychobabble-- though it's worth noting that the song employs an unconventional, ambitious rhyme scheme-- and "Bring Me Down" manages to overcome its frankly awful opening line ("Sweet like a kiss, sharp like a razor blade.") by the time Lambert draws her eventual conclusion ("Six AM, unruffled pillow / Laughs out loud at my trusting heart / Like I didn't see the pennies / Missed the fountain by a couple yards."). But, in the best moments on Kerosene, Lambert's songwriting is impossibly self-assured, challenging work.
The production job by Frank Liddell and Mike Wrucke compliments Lambert's gifts. There's no mistaking that Kerosene is a major label release; it's spit-polished and shimmering. But the edges of the production are frayed with traditional country instrumentation-- "Me and Charlie Talking" is perhaps the twangiest major-label single since Sara Evans' excellent "Suds in the Bucket." While Lambert shows that she's entirely comfortable with a traditional country sound on "Charlie" and on the Howard penned "I Can't Be Bothered," which is a well-executed Hank Williams throwback, the bulk of Kerosene lands firmly in Lucinda Williams / Sheryl Crow territory. The songwriting is undeniably country, but it's a country album that would likely appeal to a roots-rock audience, as well. Kerosene demands adjectives like "punchy" and "jangly." "New Strings," for instance, wouldn't sound out of place on Adult Top 40 radio alongside singles by Crow, Jack Johnson, or even Rob Thomas.
Vocally, Lambert works well within her limitations. As mentioned, she has something of a "girlish" tone, though she doesn't mewl in the insipid Vanessa Carlton sense, and, if she has a very substantial range, she doesn't show it off on Kerosene. But she's an incredibly expressive singer, able to sell a brash, confrontational song like "Kerosene" as well as a more sensitive ballad like the album-closing "Love Your Memory." And she absolutely nails the complex emotional core-- the nostalgia twinged with regret and longing-- of "Me And Charlie Talking." Miranda Lambert, artistically, does everything very, very well.
There was no real reason to expect anything great from Miranda Lambert. Prior to her third place (!!) finish on Nashville Star, she made her acting debut in the never-released film Slap Her, She's French, headlined by star-that-never-was Piper Perabo. Certainly neither of these facts bodes well, in terms of establishing credibility. But, despite the potential she hinted at during her stint on Nashville Star, Lambert comes out firing on Kerosene, and she provides countless reasons to expect something brilliant down the road. Kerosene ranks alongside Old Crow Medicine Show'sO.C.M.S. and The Dixie Chicks' Wide Open Spaces as among the best major-label debuts Nashville has produced in a generation, and it suggests that Lambert has the potential even to surpass those two artists, in particular.
It's an interesting time in country music, as the genre continues to threaten to take a more artistically daring turn-- thanks, in no small part, to the commercial success of Big & Rich. Lambert stands as a possible extension of that trend, and, again, it isn't difficult to imagine her finding crossover success. For the moment, though, "Me And Charlie Talking" has stalled at country radio, and the song's video has dropped from heavy rotation on CMT. So I fear that the Nashville establishment is hesitant to promote, let alone to embrace, an artist like Lambert, who brings into sharp relief the inadequacies of so many of the acts currently taking up space on major-label rosters. But, with a handful of other artists-- the aforementioned Old Crow Medicine Show and The Dixie Chicks, the getting-better-all-the-time Keith Urban, and Mercury's Julie Roberts-- Miranda Lambert gives promise that country music could once again find its footing and build an artistic base that hearkens to the genre's most timeless, powerful statements.
So, really, is it any wonder why I'm so smitten? She gets it, and she draws legitimate comparisons to Dolly Parton. If any new artist in Nashville deserves to be a star, it's Miranda Lambert.
Album Specs: Kerosene, Miranda Lambert.
Sony Nashville / Epic. EK92026.
03/15/2005.
01. "Kerosene" (Lambert), 3:05.
02. "What About Georgia?" (Lambert), 3:25.
03. "Greyhound Bound for Nowhere" (Lambert, Lambert), 4:23.
04. "New Strings" (Lambert), 3:50.
05. "I Can't Be Bothered" (Howard), 3:20.
06. "Bring Me Down" (Howard, Lambert), 4:15.
07. "Me And Charlie Talking" (Lambert, Lambert, Little), 4:12.
08. "I Wanna Die" (Lambert, Wray), 3:46.
09. "Love Is Looking for You" (Lambert), 3:52.
10. "Mama, I'm Alright" (Howard, Lambert), 4:07.
11. "There's a Wall" (Lambert), 4:15.
12. "Love Your Memory" (Lambert), 3:47.
For Fans Of: Sheryl Crow, Lucinda Williams, The Dixie Chicks, Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Tift Merritt, Patty Griffin, Kim Richey, Linda Ronstadt, Shawn Colvin.
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