Loretta Lynn - Full Circle, album review: ‘a delight’

Twelve years ago, Loretta Lynn’s fabulous, Jack White-helmed, Grammy-winning Van Lear Rose re-invented her as a genre-transcending frontierswoman.

Its follow-up, guided by Johnny Cash’s son John Carter Cash, simply re-states the 83-year-old’s case as a giant of American country and American culture.

With her voice seemingly unwithered by age, it’s a delight. As its title implies, the wholly newly recorded Full Circle takes us from the first song she wrote, Whispering Sea, to duets with Elvis Costello on the caustic Everything It Takes, and 82-year-old whippersnapper Willie Nelson on the heartbreaking Lay Me Down.

Along the way, she’s pugilistic on Fist City, imperious on I Will Never Marry, and her version of Always On My Mind could wring tears from a grasshopper.

(Legacy)