Miranda Lambert needs two discs to bear The Weight of These Wings

“Break-up record” is too reductive to describe Miranda Lambert’s The Weight of These Wings, but it’s a start. Though the country artist’s heart aches plenty in her first music after last year’s split from Blake Shelton, she struggles with more than a failed love in her latest double album.

While her previous LP, Platinum, shined with professional sheen, this album favors first-take rawness. “Highway Vagabond” and “Six Degrees of Separation” buckle down on live-band looseness. “Vice” and “Well-Rested” leave a mark through searing intimacy.

The guitars ring a little damaged, and so does Lambert. Throughout the double disc, the well-kept make-up smears off of country music’s face of feminine confidence. “Ugly Lights” puts a mirror to her flaws, from her increased reliance on alcohol to inability to keep anyone by her side.

More than details of a divorce, these deep personal cracks shown on one of the scene’s most powerful voices hurts the most to hear. But it’s also one human moment for a musical icon to prove even heroes are imperfect. Lambert once went guns blazing on an ex and his new lover. Here, she hangs that past for good for a grown look into a broken heart.

• Record: The Weight of These Wings
• Artist: Miranda Lambert
• Label: RCA Nashville
• Songs Disc 1: (1) Runnin' Just in Case (2) Highway Vagabond (3) Ugly Lights (4) You Wouldn't Know Me (5) We Should Be Friends (6) Pink Sunglasses (7) Getaway Driver (8) Vice (9) Smoking Jacket (10) Pushin' Time (11) Covered Wagon (12) Use My Heart
• Songs Disc 2: (1) Tin Man (2) Good Ol' Days (3) Things That Break (4) For the Birds (5) Well-Rested (6) Tomboy (7) To Learn Her (8) Keeper of the Game (9) Bad Boy (10) Six Degrees of Separation (11) Dear Old Sun (12) I've Got Wheels