Comes on 2LP vinyl.
An unleashed spirit returns on Palomino, demonstrating the tensile strength of Lambert’s craft in all sorts of settings.
It peels out with “Actin’ Up,” a modern Music Row rhyme showcase channeling Elvis’ Sun sessions with the spirit of an Eminem freestyle, stuttering consonants and spitting random signifiers: Billy Bob’s Texas, Tiger Woods, “Mony Mony.” After some road-trip scene-setting (“Scenes”), Lambert settles in for the ride with some Marfa Tapes remakes. “In His Arms” was already near-perfect in its fireside-demo iteration; here its acoustic guitar frame gets wrapped in a lovelorn country-western dreamscape, with watercolor-washes of electric guitar and steel. Benefiting more from a fuller arrangement is “Geraldene,” a feisty dress-down that echoes the scenario and title of Parton’s love-triangle signature, albeit with more of a “Fist City” attitude: “You’re trailer park pretty,” Lambert sings, “but you’re never gonna be Jolene.”
Palomino closes with “Carousel,” a paean to reinvention about a trapeze artist concluding her life in the spotlight. “Every show must end/Every circus leaves town,” Lambert sings, pivoting from third person to first person to reveal that the song’s subject is in fact telling her own story, the carousel a metaphor for both the stage and the cycle of time. It’s a resonant reflection for anyone who saw their old way of life end in the pandemic, temporarily or permanently. “I bet you it’s the last song I’ll ever sing when it is time,” the songwriter told Rolling Stone. As a lovely coda to a set that celebrates the thrill of unfettered motion and the reflective craft that still propels her, it’s not a bad choice…source is pitchfork.com
