speaking of brassy, i am definitely feeling miranda lambert's album platinum. she is a very distinctive and more or less wholly admirable artist. she is not one of the great voices in country history, but she can really sing in her very own way. not to be too negative, but replacing faith hill with miranda as the queen of country music is an extreme upgrade. oh man she radiates attitude like a girlish sun. and i feel the material is very worthwhile. actually, she's about as bluesy as it is possible to be in pop music today: basically the accompaniment is blues rock as only them nashville cats can kill it. also i think she's building up a whole account of what it is to be a youngish american woman now, with both good humor and genuine emotion. on the title cut she re-works nietzsche: "what doesn't kill you only makes you blonder", which is far more plausible than the original ("what doesn't kill you puts you an asylum, signing your letters 'god'").
