‘Crisco’ by Miranda Lambert
★★★
With her 10th studio album, Miranda Lambert “teaches an ages-old genre some new steps,” said Joseph Hudak in Rolling Stone. The Texas-born multi-Grammy winner is by no means abandoning country, but by stirring in some disco and yacht rock, the 42-year-old singer-songwriter “shoots down any preconceived notions about who Miranda Lambert is.” She first “dipped her cowboy boot into disco” for “A Song to Sing,” a 2025 duet with Chris Stapleton that appears here and provides the “dreamy, mirror-ball vibes” that set the tone for the rest of this album. Because Lambert also sounds “more effervescent and ballsy than ever,” the results often feel like a party. Unfortunately, Crisco is “all crust, and no filling,” said Kyle Coroneos in Saving Country Music. It’s a fun record, with a strong concept that lets Lambert mix in plenty of vintage sounds. But despite “some impressive moments,” the album is packed with catchy songs that “don’t really say much of anything.” Exceptions include “To Everything” a mid-tempo ballad with real emotion. With more of those, “Crisco could have been more than just a shallow nostalgia kick.”
‘Popstar’ by Tinashe
★★★
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“There are no bad Tinashe albums,” said Anna Gaca in Pitchfork. But her eighth might be “the best pop album of the year,” the kind that’s “fresh in the best way” because it’s “a little bit avant-garde” yet “immediately accessible.” It feels driven by “a sense of purpose—a compulsion, even—about connecting sounds circulating in pop, electronic, and dance music right now.” It packs in “dozens of brilliant little moments,” and though it takes cues from Blackout-era Britney Spears and FKA Twigs’ Eusexua, it remains “super recognizably Tinashe,” foregrounding her voice, her taste, and her cultural points of reference as a child of Southern California. “The whole album hopscotches between experimental and pop modes,” said Tobias Hess in The Fader. The experimental “Flashbacks” is a gem, combining drums that sound like pots and pans with a “glitched-out” chorus in which she boasts of giving a lover flashbacks to past bedroom romps. While the song evokes Charli XCX’s recent devotion to personal transparency and Rihanna’s knack for unforgettable hooks, “there are no other pop stars I can imagine making a track like this.”
