Loretta Lynn

Loretta Lynn

Van Lear Rose (Interscope) That Jack White produced, hand-selected the band, and plays on Loretta Lynn's 47th album certainly kicks up the hipster quotient a few hundred notches. It also reveals that the First Lady of Country Music is as capable of sock-rocking as the White Stripes, and that Jackie boy is just a little more country than his rock veneer might suggest. On their sole duet, the barn-burning "Portland Oregon," Lynn, in a spry voice that belies her 70 years, and White wail about getting smashed on pitchers of sloe-gin fizz and having a one-night stand. Cognitive dissonance aside, the song kicks ass – would that there were more moments like this on Van Lear Rose. The old-school country "Family Tree" and rockabilly "Have Mercy" revisit Lynn's jilted-wife anxiety, taking us back to the good old "Fist City" days. On "Little Red Shoes," Lynn delivers a monologue in which she reminisces about her mother stealing a pair of shoes for her, which White sets to a shambling guitar and drum backdrop. In keeping with her straightforward, autobiographical narratives, Lynn includes "Miss Being Mrs.," a paean to her beloved husband Doo, who passed away in 1996. You can almost hear the catch in her throat as she sings, "I took off my wedding band and put it on my right hand." Kudos to White's preservation of Lynn's loving, narrative songwriting even when paired with his own grittier sensibilities. In doing so, the two unlikely bedfellows have cut a classic.