Van Lear Rose

Released two weeks after her seventieth birthday, Van Lear Rose received significantly more attention than any other Loretta Lynn album released in the last three decades. Much of the hype surrounding Rose was due to the highly publicized collaboration with current top-of-the-world singer/guitarist Jack White of the White Stripes. White’s involvement turned me off (call it Elephant backlash, but I wanted nothing more to do with rock’s favorite blues hammer). Eventually Van Lear got to me, it’s lucid, catchy songs caught my ear, settled in and more or less owned much of my listening time for at least a good portion of the early fall season. 

Van Lear plays through like a (semi-autobiographical) life history starting with a young Loretta hearing the story of her parents union on the title track. “Portland Oregon” illustrates a slightly older Loretta falling in love on a drunken night in Portland. Loretta and Jack swap simple verses over an energized arrangement powered by White’s blaring electric slide guitar to wonderful results and likely Van Lear‘s prize moment.

“Trouble on the Line” was written by Loretta and her husband (Doo) and tells the story of a troubled couple airing out their good natured desperation to a distant god. The brief, powerful ballad feels very authentic and perfectly sets the stage for “Family Tree,” another country ballad on which Loretta dreams of confronting “the woman who’s burning down our family tree,” singing, “no I didn’t come to fight, if he was a better man I might / but I wouldn’t dirty my hands on trash like you.”

While the majority of Van Lear feels only like a slightly altered Loretta Lynn album, the guitar work on a handful of tracks, specifically White’s climax moments on “Have Mercy,” depict Lynn’s willingness to vary her sound now, 50 years into her career. The bluegrass sing-a-long “High on a Mountain Top” finds Lynn living in a simple mountain town, singing “we live, we love, and we laugh a lot/folks up here know what they got, high on a mountain top.” “Little Red Shoes” again finds Lynn looking back on childhood memories, this time not so fondly, as she tells a spoken word narrative of her families struggles with poverty.

“Women’s Prison” works as a sequel to “Family Tree,” as Lynn tells of a love gone wrong (“for love I’ve killed my darlin, and for love I’ll lose my life”). “This Old House” is a classic country ballad with simple, effective lyrics, while “Mrs. Leroy Brown” is an ornery, drunken story of a broken woman’s night out on the town. The powerful “Miss Being Mrs.” is a heartbreaking song reflecting on the recent loss of Lynn’s longtime husband, Oliver Lynn (Doo). The two-and-a-half-minute “Story of My Life” feels very epic, as Lynn races through the bullet-points of her life beginning in the hills of Kentucky and ending with the release of the album.

Content-wise, few albums this year have felt as authentic as Van Lear. Modestly recorded in Nashville, Van Lear musically sounds more in the vein of Beggars Banquet than her classic work with Owen Bradley in the 60s and 60s. Whether it was the death of her husband or not, let’s hope that whatever brought Loretta Lynn back to life sticks around. As for Jack White, the two have already made plans for two future recordings together. Cross your fingers for similar results.

Van Lear Rose is a modern country masterpiece, consummate in every way and positively one of 2004’s finest recordings.   8.5/10

Written by G. William Locke