Miranda Lambert believes New Jersey is a lot like Texas. I think I see what she means."His fist is big, but my gun is bigger," sang Miranda Lambert about an abusive husband on "Gunpowder and Lead." As conflict resolution strategies go, it may not be the most civilized, but the largely female crowd at the Izod Center on Saturday night certainly found it a satisfying one. Lambert asked her listeners to make finger-pistols and point them to the sky; an instant later, the East Rutherford arena was transformed into an imaginary armory stocked with girl power. Here was a rare statement that both the NRA and the NOW could get behind.
A proud Texan and a member of the Nashville girl group called Pistol Annies, Miranda Lambert plainly believes that firearms are her birthright. Her microphone stand was fashioned in the shape of a shotgun. Lambert's songs -- most of which she wrote or co-wrote herself -- often come fully loaded, both literally and figuratively. "He's out there holding on to someone," she roared in the terrific "Kerosene," "I'm holding up my smoking gun." With her long blonde locks, a wide smile, and a slightly mad glint in her eye, she's ideal for the role of the good girl driven to desperate acts by male wrongdoing. For every woman scorned, Lambert tells us, there's a man who made her that way -- and he's in big trouble. On "Mama's Broken Heart," a barnburner from her newest album "Four the Record," Lambert plays a once-demure victim of heartbreak, chafing hard at the restrictions of conventional femininity. "Sometimes revenge is a choice you've gotta make," she snarled, to wild approval.
To bring these characters to life, Lambert draws from recent "independent woman" pop-rock -- she took the stage to Beyonce's feminist anthem "Run the World (Girls)" -- and the pistol-packing outlaw country tradition of her native Texas. So deft is her synthesis of these styles that no seam was ever apparent. Lambert is only a "crazy ex-girlfriend" in her songs; as an artist-conceptualist, she's in complete command. If the 90 minute set often played like the confessions of a woman on the verge, it was also a graceful, well-calibrated amalgam of mainstream pop, Nashville country, Red Dirt Americana, sensitive singer-songwriter material, and lean, muscular rock. There were no costume changes, no stage pyrotechnics, and no elaborate distractions. Instead, Lambert led her outstanding five-piece band much as a rock frontwoman in a midsized club might have, interacting frequently with her musicians, and rarely ever disappearing from the stage.
The singer brought the ammunition, and her band -- especially drummer Keith Zebroski -- provided the gunpowder. On the power ballad "Dead Flowers," Zebroski underscored Lambert's barely-suppressed rage at a neglectful husband with snare fills that hit with the force of a sudden temper tantrum. Lambert's downtempo songs were frequently gripping -- especially "Over You," a letter to a dead relative -- but the harder the band rocked, the better the show worked. Material from the risk-taking "Four the Record" was successful, especially the slinky, Black Crowes-like "Baggage Claim," which was spiked by Chris Kline's organ, and the simmering "Fine Tune," which Lambert sang through a heavy, distorted vocal filter that wouldn't have sounded out of place at a Strokes concert.
Lambert's adventurousness extended to her choice of covers: a game attempt at Aretha Franklin's "Do Right Woman -- Do Right Man," a scalding take on the Creedence classic "Up Around the Bend," and an animated run through "Free Girl Now," a lesser-known Tom Petty single from the underrated "Echo" album. The singer evacuated some of the irony from Petty's original, but so embodied was her portrayal of a woman set free from a boss "touching her butt" that it hardly mattered.
While well-known among fans of contemporary country, Miranda Lambert isn't as big a star as some of the other Nashville favorites who've come to the Garden State over the past few years. The arena only attempted to sell half of its seats -- the stage was in the center of the floor, and the rest of the venue was hidden behind black curtains. This turned out to be a good move: it made the usually impersonal Izod Center feel almost as lively as a theatre. Intimacy suits Lambert, anyway: No matter how strong her characters come on, this is a writer who sweats every detail, and who invites her listeners close. You've got nothing to fear. Well, as long as you behave.