Many years ago, a young aspiring country singer crooned about how “They say you can’t go home again”to leave home, to keep going and to do the best you can. “The House That Built Me” became Miranda Lambert’s biggest hit of its time – and is still one of her most legendary. But now, 20 years into her career and a true superstar, Lambert has left Nashville to return home to her native Texas and rediscover herself in the process.

Think of Lambert’s aptly titled tenth album, Postcards from Texas, as life lessons told through vignettes of a road trip through the Lone Star State. (It’s also where she recorded the album, her first time since her independently released 2001 record of the same name.) At times she’s simply happy, wallowing in the nostalgia of a memory (the geographically-driven “Looking Back on Luckenbach” and “Santa Fe”). At others she’s vulnerable, regretful for the chaos her free-spirited ways have wrought (the beautiful, solo-written “Run” and the confident “Way Too Good At Breaking My Heart”).

The focus of this homecoming of the lost daughter is the lush no man’s land. Here she warns a man about how she Is free, and they can love her if they have to, but trust that she will remain true to herself: “So love her like a mustang / Like a wild animal / Better let her run free.” That’s essentially the essence of the record: it’s about a person comfortable in her own skin as a wildflower, accepting all the baggage that comes with it, but also coming to life with partners (be it co-producer Jon Randall or her husband Brendan McLoughlin) who endure the chaos alongside her.

However, she never drowns out her music with too much seriousness, but can be as cheeky as it is sincere. Whether Lambert is happily challenging an unfaithful lover to keep going out (“What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine So go on baby, have some fun”, she sings in ‘Alimony’, with a brilliant pun on the word “Alamo”) or a far-fetched story about a chance encounter with a weed-smoking, armed stranger on the run from the “Copper” (“Armadillo”), with the cheekiest of their hits they feel right at home.

Lambert is feisty, funny and free on Postcards from Texas, and it feels like the singer no longer has anything to prove to anyone. While it does occasionally fall back on genre cliches – of course there’s always that one song about lighting shit on fire (“Wranglers”) or drinking a little too much (“Bitch On The Sauce”) – and can be a bit too ballad-heavy, the country superstar’s tenth album is as charming as it is funny and engaging. After a long time, Lambert is finally back home, fully herself, and reveling in that confidence.

Details

• Record label: Vanner Records/Republic Records
• Release date: 13 September 2024