Miranda Lambert, Jack Ingram, & Jon Randall – “In His Arms”

Spencer Peeples

Miranda Lambert, Jack Ingram, & Jon Randall – “In His Arms”

Spencer Peeples

Yesterday, Miranda Lambert, one of the greatest country stars currently working, announced a new album that promises to sound very different from everything in her catalog. Lambert recorded the stripped-down, lo-fi acoustic LP The Marfa Tapes in collaboration with Jack Ingram and Jon Randall. Like Lambert, Ingram and Randall are both country singer-songwriters from Texas. Unlike her, they mostly work behind the scenes, writing songs for other people. For The Marfa Tapes, the three of them recorded some rough, unvarnished songs together, almost like they were passing guitars around a campfire.

Today, Lambert, Ingram, and Randall have dropped first single “In His Arms,” a soft and simple song that’s pretty representative of the album. Over a single guitar, Lambert sings about drifting through the world and missing someone whose trajectory once overlapped with yours: “I’ve seen El Paso and the sky was on fire/ Lost a night in Juarez a couple of times/ Danced with a cowboy on a straight tequila high/ I wish I was in his arms tonight.” In the video, the three of them sing together around a pickup truck as the sun set over the desert. It’s lovely. Check it out below.

For an extremely different version of Miranda Lambert, I give you “Drunk (And I Don’t Wanna Go Home),” the goofy country-adjacent pop song that she released last night. It’s a collaboration with Elle King, the quasi-rock singer who happens to be Rob Scheider’s daughter. I am not into it, but I know some people who are. It’s about as far as “In His Arms” as you can get, and you can check it out below.

The Marfa Tapes is out 5/7 on Vanner Records.

more from New Music