Loretta Lynn is a country music icon, rightly famed for those gutsy, no-nonsense songs of female fury that shook up Nashville in the 1960s and 70s. Her 2004 album Van Lear Rose was a bravely successful alt-country collaboration with Jack White, and now, at last, comes the follow-up. It’s less experimental but still impressive, for Lynn, who is 83, is in remarkably powerful voice, mixing nostalgia with new songs. The revival of her 1968 hit Fist City still packs a punch, and is far more forceful than the Jolene-like Everything It Takes, a duet with Elvis Costello. Elsewhere, there are folksongs from her Appalachian childhood, including a sturdy reworking of Black Jack David, her own meditations on death, a new version of Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven and the typically direct and powerful Who’s Gonna Miss Me? A remarkable lady, and still a great songwriter.
