Jack Ingram, Miranda Lambert and Jon Randall have today released their stunning new project – The Marfa Tapes – a stunningly tender and intimate new project that contains multitudes of the country genre within every track. Listen to the project here.
There’s a kind of magic that ensues when Jack Ingram, Miranda Lambert and Jon Randall get in a room together. The proof was first shown on Lambert’s extraordinary double album The Weight of These Wings released in 2016, also recorded in Marfa, Texas. Marfa is an eccentric outpost in the middle of nowhere – a place to find or lose yourself. For Lambert, Randall, and Ingram, it’s both. Over the past several years, the desolate location has become a songwriting haven for the trio, yielding both massive hits and profound personal growth. When they returned for five days this past November though, they came not to write, but to record, capturing a captivating new album inspired by the stark beauty of west Texas and the deep, lasting bonds the three have forged there. Recorded raw and loose with just a pair of microphones and an acoustic guitar, The Marfa Tapes is a stunning work of audio verité; an intimate, unadorned snapshot of a moment in time fueled by love, trust, and friendship that is brought to life through the unedited, raw nature of the project. It’s the kind of record that sums up the magical tradition and roots of the country genre itself – almost painfully intimate sonically, yet universal lyrically. You can feel the weight of the history and years of the genre’s evolution hanging over the entirety of the project.
There is a ragged and loose edge to the project – you can hear crackling fires, winds and airplane sounds in the background at points – that makes it feel like a true snapshot of time into the friendship between these three artists, a candid and rare look into their chemistry as performers. As Ingram says, “There’s something singular that happens in that moment of collaboration and creation, something you can never really recreate in the studio…Our hope with this album was to share a little bit of that magic with people.”
The joy and exuberance of the genre comes through in the project. As they joke at the end of ‘Homegrown Tomatoes’ about not even knowing what the song is about. There is a sense that the artists have not taken themselves too seriously on this project – on this last, it feels like they are about to burst into laughter throughout – and it is this very idea that makes it more endearing as they sing about ‘being fucked up and falling in love.’ There is already a feeling that this track will fast become a campfire classic, as will later track ‘Two-Step Down To Texas’ – a fun, finger-snapping jovial track led by Lambert layered by light harmonies, the trio on the verge of losing themselves to laughter throughout. For fans of Lambert’s sassier side, ‘Geraldine’ will pack a hefty punch, a punchily delivered track about a woman trying to put her down.
Elsewhere, the trio reach to the longing side of love on the yearning ‘In His Arms’ that really brings to life their harmonies and on ‘The Wind’s Just Gonna Blow’ where they sing about love gone astray – Lambert’s vocal here is exceptional. Sonically, the trio are at their best in the layered harmonies on ‘Am I Right or Amarillo’ whose harmonies bring back the rounded sense of the heritage of the genre they are a part of. There is a true sense of pain and regret here that is carried through into ‘Waxahachie,’ where Lambert unpicks an argument with a lover. On ‘Ghost’ and ‘Breaking a Heart,’ the trio reach inside the most painful, intimate parts of themselves – this is the most stunning part of the record by far. On ‘Breaking a Heart,’ Ingram takes the lead to sing about which is harder, ‘being heart broken or breaking a heart.’ ‘Ghost’ is the standout track on the record, by a country mile, where Lambert sings about a lover now just being a ghost, it’s tender and emotional in a way that Lambert’s vocal seems to be able to capture like no other. ‘Anchor’ celebrates the liberating power of love in a blissfully tender, lyrical track. ‘Be my anchor, pull me under… I can’t breathe when I’m with you, when I’m with you I could fly.’ It is the very authenticity and the unedited nature of the record that gives it the emotional pull that underlies all these tracks.
Two of the tracks on the record we have heard before on Lambert’s other projects – ‘Tin Man’ and ‘Tequila Does’ – yet they are given new life in the desert atmosphere, and a reminder of the power of Lambert’s vocal that is best in its rawest form. The album is rounded out with ‘Amazing Grace (West Texas),’ where the trio prove their power to pack a weighty emotional punch, breathing new life into the well-worn hymn.
On The Marfa Tapes, Lambert, Ingram and Randall are able to underline the power of their own artistry. It’s an incredible departure from the gloss of her studio records – these songs would stand up against any of her others with the proper treatment. Having recorded these tracks with the external noise – cows, helicopters and birds – and revealing the mistakes, shows both the human side of the artists, but also the fact that even with mistakes, these are truly phenomenal artists who don’t need the gloss and polish to make them stars. It’s a stunning project that takes country music back to its roots – making it phenomenally special.
