Two-thirds of the way through Hard Staying Sober, just when you think the song has come to its resigned conclusion, Miranda Lambert explodes into life again. "Why ya think the world drinks?" she demands, and the song abruptly turns on a dime from melancholy to defiant solidarity.

Platinum, her fifth solo album, finds Lambert swaggering righteously like the Partonesque country superstar she is. In between, though, she repeatedly homes in on the details of lives (specifically, working-class female lives) spent numbing pain and keeping up appearances – and in deriving what power one can from it. Thus, Bathroom Sink's meditation on self-loathing and Gravity Is a Bitch's wry commentary on ageing don't so much undercut as fuel the braggadocio of the title track, the Thelma & Louise fantasy of Somethin' Bad, an anthemic paean to untameable heroines. Only the retrograde cliches of Automatic fall flat: Lambert's nods to smalltown tradition are better served by ambivalence, whether fond (Smokin' and Drinkin') or sad (Babies Making Babies). The progenitor of the latest brilliant wave of female country voices (Kacey Musgraves, Brandy Clark) isn't done rebelling.