Carrie Underwood, ‘Denim and Rhinestones.’

“Some things don’t get any better than when they go together/ Denim and rhinestones,” Carrie Underwood sings with an effortless vocal run in the bridge of the title track off her new album, Denim & Rhinestones. The song, and its booming production, are tinged with classic Underwood style that will undoubtedly make you want to belt every vocal run alongside her after your first listen.

But Underwood is wrong. Something is, in fact, a better duo than denim and rhinestones? It’s Underwood with a microphone in hand. Denim & Rhinestones is her ninth studio release and third in just the last three years. Since winning “American Idol” 17 years ago, recording, touring and starting a family, she’s barely taken a break, delivering one passionate and flawlessly executed performance after another through it all.

For most of her career, Underwood’s almost completely kept her personal life out of the spotlight, perhaps except for her Christianity. Instead, listeners have developed an understanding of her life and personality through two types of songs she’s made entirely into her own: ballads often with religious themes and revenge-filled anthems.

She’s strayed farther from her signature characteristics in recent years. You could feel she’d become both a mother and wife on 2018’s Cry Pretty with songs like “Love Wins” and “Kingdom,” while on her 2020 and 2021 back-to-back releases for Christmas and Easter, she opted entirely for gospel ballads.

Those more recent releases make Denim & Rhinestones her most distinct album yet. It’s all about having fun. After the opening song, Carrie Underwood delves into an unrelenting string of tracks that bring the full-force energy. There’s “Velvet Heartbreak,” about a man who brings both the looks and love, only to leave you heartbroken, drunk and crying. “You gotta try him on/ But don’t cut the tags off if you take him home,” she sings.

On the foot-stomping “Crazy Angels,” she lets her wilder side out—though making sure to remind us, “You know where to find me on a Sunday morning.” The song rocks, and like the majority of the album, is short, fast and loud. After kicking in right after the opening verse, the energy is high as Carrie Underwood hits the dance floor, a whiskey in hand and her friends at her side. If you looking for the angel wings she typically sports, they’re checked with the doorman.

The album is more garish than anything she’s released before, and the sound truly integrates the imagery of flashy jean jackets and dripping jewlery. On “Poor Everybody Else,” the guitars grind harder than ever before as she sings with almost a growl about a girl who’s “a wrecking ball looking for a wall to break.” This one could be the new encore for Reflection, her Vegas residency. With the whole band playing, sparks flying and the fringe from her coat thrashing, Underwood will undoubtedly leave a mark on the crowd, just like the song’s subject.

“Adrenaline rising/ Ain’t feeling no pain,” she sings at the start of “Pink Champagne,” which follows in the vein of “Crazy Angels.” It’s another love song, as nothin’ can get her drunker than her man’s love. “I can have all that I want/ Don’t be cutting me off,” she sings. She’s stated the purpose of the album is to have fun, and she’s having plenty of it. If the album’s lyrics weren’t so country themselves, the album would actually tread the line of rock and roll.

There are moments when the music does let up, though nothing here comes anywhere close to past hits like “Jesus, Take the Wheel.” “Faster” can only be about her husband, who genuinely makes her heart flutter as they dance in the living room, while the concluding track, “Garden,” finds her reflecting on her upbringing. “If you reap what you sow/ What kind of garden would you grow?”

If Carrie Underwood answered the question herself, the garden would be luscious and green, commanded by a scarecrow in—you guessed it—denim and rhinestones. It wouldn’t be all that different from the reign she’s had over country music for nearly two decades. Here’s to another two decades of good music and even better belting.

Follow Domenic Strazzabosco at Twitter.com/domenicstrazz and Instagram.com/domenicstrazz.