Rating: NNNN
The idea of the White Stripes’ Jack White producing a country album for legendary Coal Miner’s Daughter Loretta Lynn was admittedly a shrewd career jump-start scheme, but the pairing didn’t seem quite right until after the Jason Stollsteimer beat-down. It was clear then that our boy Jack had a much better handle on where Lynn was coming from on her classics like Fist City than most of us – including Stollsteimer – anticipated. It’s still too early to tell whether Van Lear Rose will be Lynn’s comeback ticket, but it’s definitely a welcome turn away from Nashville’s current “hot tub” country trend. Lynn’s economically written story songs – largely unburdened by layers of metaphor – are tastefully arranged by White and given a slap-dash once-over by the Greenhornes rhythm section, with a little banjo and fiddle twang added by Dirk Powell. The jaunty hoedowns that Lynn likely insisted on keeping are wildly out of sync, but the hard-learned revelations make up for the relatively minor corn quotient.
