It’s surely with one eye on Johnny Cash’s legacy-sealing valedictory burst of creativity that Loretta Lynn, now 83, has asked his son, John Carter Cash, and her daughter, Patsy Lynn Russell, to be joint producers of Full Circle, apparently the first in a series of releases. The queen of country’s first album since 2004’s Van Lear Rose opens with a re-recording of the first song she ever wrote, then works through a selection of standards (Always On My Mind, In the Pines) and career highlights(Fist City). The newly written material, equally powerful, includes the standout Wine Into Water, a drinker’s plea to God, and climaxes with Lay Me Down, a duet with fellow octogenarian Willie Nelson about facing life’s final curtain. It feels like a simultaneous (re)introduction to Lynn’s career, and a summing up, and makes for a worthy companion piece to Cash’s American Recordings.
