Lambert has a personality so big, a backstory so full of trauma and small triumph, it feels wrong to call this a debut.
Her full-throated confessional style and presumption of the listener’s familiarity renders the label faintly ridiculous. Lambert saturates her record with anthemic ballads, making it powerful but sometimes unmemorable. Only the experimental Ribcage justifies the hype. Its bedding of hollow, flat beats sounds a bit like a Midwestern, dime-store Lorde, while its lyrics (“Tie it from my tendons, watch how they stretch”) provide the perfect example of her obsession with morbid, self-incisive honesty.
