Consumer Guide Album

Miranda Lambert: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend [Sony/BMG Nashville, 2007]
Good thing she sets off four firecrackers--pulls a gun on her big-fisted ex-boyfriend, belts two hard-headed sermons on small-town life, rips up the title tune--before wasting precious tracks proving she can also do mature. But she can--shortly after "Love Letters" waltzes with Nashville nostalgia, "More Like Her" sidles up to the complexity one values in mature types. Whereupon, the clinchers: the mature firecrackers "Down" and "Guilty in Here." Followed, for the alt-country contingent, by a Patty Griffin cover she ignites and a Carlene Carter cover she doesn't. A