Four the Record

This does wind down into your basic quality country album.

Four is her most vivid effort yet, with brilliantly observed songs about lust (''Fine Tune'') and disappointment (''Same Old You''), as well as a stirring celebration of diversity (''All Kinds of Kinds'').

Four the Record retain all the pain and personality that drove those dark songs [of her first two albums] and redirects her energies toward some of her best and most eloquent singing and songwriting yet.

With Four the Record, she's digging deeper than ever before and finding considerable riches.

The bevy of writers and co-writers guiding Lambert results in a ranging, not especially cohesive album that makes up for the occasional dud (the schmaltzy power ballad "Better In The Long Run," a duet with Lambert's husband Blake Shelton) with plenty of solid earworms (the catchy mid-tempo "Safe") and a couple of welcome left turns (the loping, back-porch sing-along "Easy Living").

On a rock solid and expansive set of songs, Lambert mixes backbeats, production styles, fuzzed-out vocals, slinky slide guitars, and other offbeat elements into a cohesive whole.

This successor represents a further evolution of her talent as both creator and interpreter.

The real strength here is the feline sharpness of Lambert's voice.

Without a thematic through line or recurring lyrical motifs or meaningful efforts at myth-building or any of the other sophisticated flourishes that have made her albums so rich, Four the Record is left as a solid collection of better-than-average songs cast in arrangements that offer a progressive take on modern country.

This is the weakest of Lambert's four big solo records, and overall it lacks the lively charm of Hell on Heels, her excellent August album with the supergroup Pistol Annies.