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Loretta Lynn
Van Lear Rose
Jack White makes over the Coal
Miner’s Daughter
Reviewed by RJ Smith
Blender Magazine
Finally, Jack White has met his match. Recuperating from
a broken finger last year, the White Stripes’ combatant
put down his dukes and pulled into a Nashville studio
with Loretta Lynn. The woman who wrote
stand-up-for-yourself country anthems like “Your Squaw
Is on the Warpath” and “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With
Lovin’ on Your Mind)” in the 1960s brought out White’s
courtly side: On Van Lear Rose, the Detroit river rat
celebrates Lynn, the pride of Butcher’s Hollow,
Kentucky. Some country rebels want to burn Nashville
down, but Lynn, pushing 70, has a better idea: She
paints it red and white.
The garage-stomp flow and ragged-ass guitar are
unmistakably White Stripes–issue, as White plays guitar
and keyboards and harmonizes throughout. He penned
“Little Red Shoes,” the one song not written by Lynn,
and even duets with her on the incredible “Portland,
Oregon.” The intro here is some of the deepest music
he’s come up with — a rumble in the cold, cold night
that yields to a mountain fog, sounding as old as your
ancestors and as new as yesterday at the same time. Then
Lynn comes in, singing “Well, Portland, Oregon, and sloe
gin fizz, if that ain’t love, then tell me what is,
uh-huh.” She’s describing the kind of chance encounter
you remember for the rest of your life. Whatever her
age, it’s some of the most gripping singing you’re going
to hear all year.
Lynn had country hit after hit in the ’60s and ’70s, a
time when being a rebel girl — or even an in-control
kitten like Shania Twain — was unthinkable. So she went
on with her forbidden thoughts, creating a maverick
persona that was loving and faithful, yet never afraid
to throw down for what she had coming. The new songs
“Women’s Prison” (she killed her cheating man and is
heading for the executioner, more in love than ever) and
“Family Tree” (“I wouldn’t dirty my hands on trash like
you,” she sings to her husband’s girlfriend) embellish
her legacy as a blue-collar feminist. Stoic, ladylike
and underneath it all able to tame ocelots, Lynn has
made a brave, unrepeatable record that speaks to her
whole life.
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