Somewhere between a demo collection, a live album with no audience, and a lo-fi left turn, the ad-hoc country trio’s desert recording session focuses on the simple joys of songwriting.
No genre romanticizes the art of songwriting like country music, and The Marfa Tapes is a late-night love letter to its myth. Miranda Lambert, along with collaborators Jack Ingram and Jon Randall, headed to West Texas with just an acoustic guitar and some ideas in a notebook. They recorded these 15 songs by a ranch in the desert, documenting first takes, trading lead vocals, and figuring out harmonies. Between songs, they cracked jokes and reassured each other, poured shots and marvelled at their surroundings. In an accompanying documentary, they’re laid-back and amiable, even giddy, as they get to work. “Not everything has to be a business decision,” Lambert says of their process. “I miss music.”
Somewhere between a demo collection, a live album with no audience, and a lo-fi left turn, this music is a joy to hear, like a vacation on record. Lambert has always crafted her studio albums in the spirit of sprawling travelogues, dynamic enough to house radio singles, earnest tributes, and winking in-jokes. Like 2016’s double album The Weight of These Wings, which featured the trio’s first collaborations, The Marfa Tapes excels in this spacious terrain just beyond the mainstream. While it lacks the gravitas of her more polished releases, it is bound by a cozy sense of quiet that spans tracks that sound like hits (“Anchor,” a ballad sung by Ingram) along with the actual hits (a solo rendition of Lambert’s 2016 song “Tin Man”).
Each of these performances are co-writes, and none aspire to be the definitive take. A turn away from the high-stakes world of country radio, The Marfa Tapes puts the focus on the simple joys of songwriting and delivery, offering the group’s music as something wide open and alive, with room to shift and suit their moods. Somewhere along the way in the chugging, old-school “Geraldene,” Lambert tries a stuttering read of the title, lighting a spark in her collaborators and ramping the energy into something closer to Southern rock. Even the rhyme scheme of “Homegrown Tomatoes” (“See ya later alligator/We’re U.S. prime/Weed and wine/Homegrown tomaterrs”) makes it impossible for the trio not to laugh. If you are in the right mood, these recordings can transport you beside them.
In the same way that Pistol Annies, Lambert’s supergroup with Angeleena Presley and Ashley Monroe, formed a righteous utopia after her mainstream success, The Marfa Tapes is a useful pivot following 2019’s Grammy-winning Wildcard: a campfire summit for country lifers who share a belief that the most exciting part of songwriting is when it’s all still up in the air. The music fares best at its most lighthearted, although one of the ballads ranks among the trio’s finest material together. The opening “In His Arms” is a stunner: a standard in the making, where the simplicity of the presentation amplifies the timeless appeal. The lyrics are a basic rundown of the imagery that informs a release like this: rolling stones and tumbleweed, cowboys and tequila. Lambert sings about the one who got away, dreaming of a day when they will be reunited. Randall strums his guitar and joins for harmonies with Ingram every time the chorus rolls around. They are singing about better days ahead but they’re making the present moment sound pretty good, too.
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