Plenty of artists used the COVID quarantine to produce new work of one sort or another. Through Zoom concerts and table reads, virtual presentations became ubiquitous. On the more ambitious side, Taylor Swift hunkered down and recorded not one but two full-length albums.

Miranda Lambert split the difference with a surprise release of her own. Teaming up with two friends and songwriting collaborators, Jack Ingram and Joe Randall, she headed to the small town of Marfa, Texas, to record a decidedly low-fi quarantine album.

The Marfa Tapes was recorded with only two microphones and two acoustic guitars, as the three performers traded songs and verses. Thirteen of the 15 tracks are new releases, and the album also features new versions of beloved Lambert tracks ‘Tin Man’ and ‘Tequila Does,’ both written by the trio during earlier sessions.

Capturing the sounds of a late-night jam session, The Marfa Tapes offers up between-song banter, includes flubbed lines and musical mistakes, and at one point even captures the sound of a passing helicopter policing the nearby border. You can hear the sound of a crackling campfire throughout.

Through tear-soaked ballads and foot-stomping romps, the trio serves up an excellent batch of new songs, each performed with real emotion and spontaneity. I half hope Lambert will deliver more polished recordings of some of these tracks on future albums, but they are certainly special as captured here.