If you’d told me a few years back that Miranda Lambert would be releasing a disco album, I’d have laughed in your face. The crazy ex-girlfriend who likes to burn stuff down? The woman who was more likely to be standing at the bar getting the drinks in than heading onto the dance floor? Miranda who released the Marfa Tapes? Last seen in a Texas honky tonk? Miranda? Disco?
So yes before listening to this whole album in full, I had severe doubts. On first glance the project seemed like a mid-life crisis, an artist trying to follow Kacey’s ‘High Horse’ or the ‘Bell Bottom Country’ 70s trend and getting it slightly wrong. The video for ‘Crisco’ felt a little awkward, like she was uncomfortable dancing on camera.
But I did love ‘A Song to Sing’, with Chris Stapleton and loved the roller disco vibe of that video which was the original inspiration for this whole album. After the first few songs were released I was still unsure but soon I found myself going back to them quite often. Sure it was disco, but it was country disco, it had a beautifully lush sheen to the sound. Plus Miranda’s voice just always pulls me in. Slowly Crisco started to make sense to me.
In fact looking at the trajectory of her career over the past few years I think Miranda actually needed this new direction. She seems to have been searching for something different for a while. On Palomino she was kind of wandering, happy in her music but not going anywhere particularly new. ‘Postcards From Texas’ was a deliberate looking back at where she came from and how that place made her the artist she is today.
In this time she’s also switched record labels twice too, now on Mercury after the attempt at hitting the zeitgeist by teaming up with Big Loud finished after only one album. Opening for label mate Morgan Wallen on his massive stadium tour seemed to me to be a real backward step, like she was desperate to cling on to relevancy in the mainstream. It was more than depressing to see an icon of the genre, a future Country Hall of Famer no doubt, opening for an idiot and playing to half filled venues of drunk kids who likely couldn’t care less.
However Miranda has made smart moves recently too by collaborating with Lainey Wilson and more significantly Ella Langley. The success of Choosin’ Texas is insane at this point, and Miranda’s co-writing and production credit is part of music history now. What’s more significant to me though is how she’s mentored the younger generation of female artists in a notoriously difficult genre. There’s no sense of competitiveness in these relationships, she was the keeper of the flame and now she’s found her little pilot lights, her fireflies in the rain.
And she’s learned from them too, without copying what they’ve done. She could have gone down the Lainey Wilson bluesy seventies pop rock lane easily. I honestly half-expected her to record her own version of ‘Choosin’ Texas’ and try to copy Ella’s vibe. But Crisco is something else entirely. Brave, for sure, and on paper it shouldn’t work. But then you forget that Miranda can do the campy, glittery, glamour turn too.
In fact in this current climate with country music under the MAGA microscope (thanks to Carrie and some other online discourse) choosing to write a disco album for the dance floor, a vintage sounding record of escape, that also appeals to the gays and the drag queens, is actually a bold and brilliant move (even if she admits on the NY Times Popcast that she didn’t set out with any particular message or purpose in mind).
Opening song ‘Snakeskin Boots’ is a fun ‘Thelma and Louise’ inspired duet, originally written for Ella’s album. For me it doesn’t hold up melodically and emotionally in comparison to the other duets she’s done with women this year – ‘Butterfly Season’ and ‘Horses and Divorces’ – but it’s still got an enjoyable outlaw, Western feel to it.
I’ve come around to the title track ‘Crisco’ too – it’s just a love song, about enjoying music and dancing around your kitchen without caring what people think. The strings and the production sparkle like those rhinestones she’s singing about. Don’t overthink it, it’s not that deep, it’s just a quick bite of tasty biscuit.
More interesting is ‘Cowgirl Curtsy’, which might actually be one of the most traditional country songs that Miranda has ever done. With its line dancing video she’s happily leaning into the honky tonk and countrypolitan sound, which is actually a better word for the sound of this album. Similarly ‘Two Things Can Be True’ gives us her big Tammy Wynette moment, and I always love to hear this style of emotive singing from her.
So yes despite the pre-released songs the majority of this album isn’t really ‘disco’ at all. In fact a song like ‘Cuttin Onions’ would fit perfectly on any Miranda or Pistol Annies record, with its hilarious metaphor and tough girl edge.
Miranda has also credited Glen Campbell’s influence on the album and ‘Till The Going’s Gone’ is her rhinestone cowgirl. It also feels like the most Miranda lyrically too, her restless spirit and the highway metaphors just work perfectly. This song leads nicely into ‘To Everything’ which seems to take the circus characters of fan favourite ‘Carousel’ and gives them another, melancholic life.
Miranda has the best drinking songs of course, and ‘Whiskey Business’ is another fun one. ‘Right Where We Left It’ sounds like a lost seventies classic country hit, bringing the good times back. She also offers us a cover of Jim Croce’s ‘I’ll Have to Say I Love You in a Song’ which is a lovely nod to the era.
We then have the song that started this whole project, the smooth and sweet ‘A Song to Sing’. Miranda and Chris sound SO good together, and (sorry to their spouses) but they’ve got chemistry too and this just makes me want a full duets album from Lamberton (produced by Dave Cobb please).
On first listen, final song ‘Sunset Marquis’ felt like a strange, almost anti-Miranda Lambert song and it’s taken me this long to realise that is the point. Miranda famously hated LA and found herself adrift when staying there during her first marriage, and yet in Sunset Marquis she found one place that was cool and felt like a fit. Even if disco, the seventies, the strings and all of the album musically might not have been her natural terrain she’s found a place for herself and she’s having a fabulous time.
I have no idea what ‘Crisco’ actually is and I don’t even want to know. What I do know is that the result is fluffy, light and absolutely delicious. Maybe we should all just stop over thinking and just hit the disco occasionally?
Turn the glitterball ON, Crisco is a DELIGHT.
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