Wall Street Journal Reviews Van Lear
Rose
They Sing of Life's Disappointments And Its
Epiphanies
By LUKE TORN
October 14, 2004; Page D7
As
the first tentative strums reel you into Loretta Lynn's
first album in four years, and her voice leads you into the
heartfelt, folksy narrative that is "Van Lear Rose," the
most startling facet of the sound is not the guitar textures
of her improbable collaborator, White Stripes man Jack
White. It's the pure, backwoods "country" in Ms. Lynn's
voice. A striking instrument, one that's been largely
missing from the pop landscape for nearly a generation, her
succinct, Appalachian twang burrows its way into a
listener's subconscious.
That the songs, all written or co-written by Ms. Lynn,
resonate with slice-of-life struggles and epiphanies
solidifies the stature of "Van Lear Rose" (Interscope) as
one 2004's strongest and most surprising albums. Expanding
on career-long themes like fidelity, family ties and a
strong sense of place, Ms. Lynn offers an antidote to the
suburban rootlessness endemic to the contemporary country
charts with a comeback album that rivals "American
Recordings," Johnny Cash's epochal 1994 effort.
Ms. Lynn, a gutsy, righteous and fearless female voice in an
age when the music industry was tightly controlled by men,
revolutionized country music during the 1960s and 1970s. Her
string of 50-plus top-10 singles rivals virtually anyone,
while the turbulent subject matter of hits like "Don't Come
Home A-Drinkin' (With Lovin' on Your Mind)," "Fist City,"
and "The Pill" staked out fiercely independent sexual and
emotional terrain.
On "Van Lear Rose," Ms. Lynn belatedly expands on the social
conundrums raised in her earlier work. In one of the album's
most indelible tunes, "Family Tree," she follows a trail of
infidelity, babies in tow, to confront her cheating husband.
When his lover answers the door, Ms. Lynn's scorn reaches a
pitiful but defiant apotheosis: "I wouldn't dirty my hands
on trash like you," she sings. "Women's Prison" is even more
stark, but this time the bullets fly. In it, she guns down
her conniving paramour in a barroom, her death sentence
carried out amid the uncontrollable sobs of her mother.
But not everything on "Van Lear Rose" carries the weight of
the world. The bouncy "High on a Mountain Top" sings the
simple virtues of country living, while the album's title
song, sporting a most beguiling melody, encompasses the kind
of country reminiscence that blurs personal narrative into
folktale.
Ms. Lynn's choice of producer, Jack White, the principal
singer and writer behind indie-rock darlings the White
Stripes, is unconventional. Approaching the project with a
gleeful disdain for the cookie-cutter methods of making
records nowadays, not to mention a belief in the virtue of
first takes that would be anathema to Owen Bradley (Ms.
Lynn's hitmaking producer), Mr. White takes chances.
A Lynn/White duet, "Portland Oregon," pulses with odd
merriment, a prime example of the musical chemistry in
evidence: "Well Portland Oregon and sloe gin fizz/If that
ain't love then tell me what is," goes Ms. Lynn's sassy
vocal. It sports an arrangement more akin to 1960s garage
rock than the Nashville Sound.
In fact, Mr. White's production (along with the raw
musicianship of a makeshift band called the Do Whaters)
frames the songs in disparate ways, edging Ms. Lynn into
blues, spoken word, honky-tonk, bluegrass and, yes, rock 'n'
roll. Not everything works to perfection: The arty, mumbled
arrangement of "Little Red Shoes" unnecessarily obscures its
narrative, while the hard-rock power-trio angle of "Have
Mercy" forces Ms. Lynn out of her emotional timbre.
The artistic gambles, though, are part of the album's charm,
and "Van Lear Rose's" looseness and off-the-cuff
spontaneity, dismally lacking in today's technology- and
money-driven recording industry, make Loretta Lynn's
entirely unexpected comeback a rousing success.
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