Music Review: Loretta Lynn's "Van Lear Rose"

Loretta Lynn being one of country music’s reigning queens, it’s safe to say that her 2004 album Van Lear Rose will have its share of gems, and it’s in the reviewer’s best interest to get to all of the songs in short order. But getting past the first and eponymous track is no easy business. Here’s why. It’s a good story, for one; most of Lynn’s songs are. “Van Lear Rose” describes a bit of family backstory that’s obvious but delightful in a “Tell it again, Daddy,” sort of way. And. Lynn’s voice is way up in the mix so that you’d swear, if you kept your eyes closed and finished your drink, that you were sitting right next to the stage. Plus. Lynn’s got a knack for easing up on the throttle, quieting things down for a verse, and allowing the consonants and glottals of the lyrics do their own work: she sort of both talks and sings as the band hushes up for a bit, and that’s such a consummate storyteller’s moment that you might as well be watching Mark Twain (or one of his imitators) slap the stage with the ball of his foot, adjust his white jacket with both hands and a shrug, and rogueishly harrumph. You can see Lynn sing this song. She’s either just behind or just ahead of the beat, and you suspect that she’s a little bit off this way because she’s busy bouncing up and down in front of the mic, the hem of her gingham dress in her fist, swaying fro and fro and to.

Then there’s “Portland, Oregon”, a sly account of a too-short night in that eponymous, incredible clean city, and let me tell you that this contains one of the biggest hooks this side of a New Pornographers tune. When Lynn and Jack White spiel out the “uh-huhs” on their way to the bridge, with all of the emphasis on the “huh” part, it’s like a gigantic two-finger come hither which you are powerless to resist. A big ol’ Come on. A monster Grab my hand and let’s get to the dance floor right now, Hot Stuff.

What’s that? Oh yeah, Jack White? Of The White Stripes? Did I not mention? He produces the whole album. That I don’t mention him until now says a lot, I suppose, given that White duets with Lynn on that second track and basically does a bang-up job as a slide guitarist, backup singer, and console-minder. Even so, there’s no question whose show this is. There’s precedent for this kind of something-old, something-new partnership; the most recent and famous touchstone would be Rick Rubin’s work with Johnny Cash in the nineties and with Neil Diamond in 2005. Rubin’s M.O. was mainly to strip down his musicians’ sound until they felt vulnerable, barren, and human; in the process he himself garnered this not-totally-undeserved reputation as a canny student of his older, greater collaborators, and pretty soon that was what you heard more than you heard the music itself: “Rubin really gets these guys, you know? He like really understands them.” You know? Here it’s not like that. White makes Lynn feel so young: every song has a ramshackle immediacy that turns out to be a sorta-new way of thinking about adding records to living legends’ discographies. Why do the bare-bones “O Death” routine when you can do what “Have Mercy” does, “Have Mercy” being a dirty blues that depends on a pounded-out triplet figure before seguing into this jazzy bass vamp that’ll make you shimmy? Or “High On the Mountaintop”, which is is a footstomping hootenanny that sounds like a guest-singer outtake from Springsteen’s Seeger Sessions? If Jack White needed any more kudos, well, here they are.

Not every song will register the way the aforementioned songs will and do. But that doesn’t mean the record lags toward its end. After the racounteurish “Little Red Shoes” and the frowny “God Makes No Mistakes,” it’s on to the slow inferno of “Women’s Prison” and the this-truck-ain’t-got-no-brakes of “Mrs. Leroy Brown.” Somewhere, Jim Croce’s cracking a wry smile. And he’s not easy to get to smile, Jim Croce. Jim Croce being, well, passed on from this earth. But you know who's very much alive, don't you. Loretta Lynn. After listening to this record twice or thrice, I read that Lynn turned 71 back in April. 71. I believed it not. Neither should you.