If I had to live forever with just one “Solitude,” I’d probably pick the one on The Popular Duke Ellington. And if forced to choose a favorite “Amazing Grace,” I reckon it would have to be Aretha’s. But proverbial desert islands notwithstanding, I’m not sure I believe in quote-unquote definitive versions of songs, and I’m not sure that Miranda Lambert does either. On The Marfa Tapes—a reel of non-produced campfire recordings made with Jack Ingram and Jon Randall— she sings “Tin Man,” just as she’s probably done at every concert since the song first appeared on The Weight of These Wings. The version here is not radically different from the original, but it does have a slight variance in tone, a casualness that comes with familiarity. She’s not reading it into the public record so much as she’s settling into familiar contours, reacquainting herself with what must seem like a lifetime of memories. At the end of the song, she complains that one of her strings was buzzing, but her pals aren’t here for any self-effacing bullshit. “That was your brain buzzing,” one of them says.

All 15 songs on The Marfa Tapes have a similar looseness. On Wildcard’s “Tequila Does,” the only other familiar tune here, Lambert briefly forgets the words, eliciting giggles. In “Geraldine,” she makes what seems like an impromptu decision to imitate the stutter and skip of a vinyl record (“G-g-Geraldine! Geraldine!”); there is more laughter, and a spontaneous uptick in the song’s bristling energy. Harmony parts sound like they are being worked out in real time. Nearly every song is bookended by jokes, encouragements, or general expressions of enthusiasm from the three performers (the word “fun” comes up a lot), and you can also hear the wind blowing over the microphone, the rustling of trees, the hollow thump of guitars and other gear. This ambiance is crucial to the vibe, creating a connective tissue of warmth and camaraderie that stitches these ragged performances together. Meanwhile, not a single one of these performances sounds like it’s meant to be the definitive take, nor like there is even any interest in achieving a definitive take; The Marfa Tapes is nothing if not a celebration of performance, the way the right song at the right time and in the right company can spark irreplaceable joy. These songs aren’t being immortalized, but savored; not embalmed, but discovered. 

They are all thrillingly low-key, single-take, bare-bones renditions, performed by just the three musicians under the starlight of Marfa, Texas. (Pitchfork’s Sam Sodomsky describes the album as “somewhere between a demo collection, a live album with no audience, and a lo-fi left turn.”) And if none of the songs sound authoritative, they all sound pretty perfect in their own shaggy way. For most listeners, the standouts will be the big, sad ones: “In His Arms” dreams of the one who got away, while “Waxahachie” traces a post-breakup trail of tears. I’m just as fond of the lighter ones: “Two-Step Down to Texas” suggests that Ingram and Randall share Lambert’s affinity for “old sh!t,” while “We’ll Always Have the Blues” is a breezy shuffle, complete with some rough whistling. Country pros that they are, all three songwriters have a knack for melancholy, chronicling heartache with precision, detail, and economy. (Random line: “I don’t wear my ring no more/ kids and time will learn to love us both.”) But even the saddest songs are played with a palpable sense of joy; they revel in the pleasure of sharing music together, if only for a moment, if just for a night.