Loretta Lynn: Van Lear Rose

VAN LEAR ROSE is an album of 13 songs explosively written and sung by Loretta Lynn. Jack White, of the White Stripes, produced it. Eric McConnell recorded the sessions, on an 8-track board in an old house in Nashville; the mix, by White and Stuart Sikes, was done in Memphis. A young rock quartet, all of whose members contribute percussion and background vocals and are billed on the CD as the Do Whaters — pedal-steel/slide/dobro player Dave Feeny, drummer Patrick Keeler, bassist Jack Lawrence, plus White on electric and acoustic guitar as well as organ and piano — play the music. In today's parade of disparate album releases, Van Lear Rose occupies its own dimension of accomplishment and achievement. It sounds and feels as though it fell to Earth, somehow. From who knows where.