★★★★★
Such was the high turnover of product from country music's factories at the time that the albums brought together on this disc are just two of the half-dozen Lynn released during 1964 and '65. And though she was fast making a name for herself as a writer as well as singer, only four tracks on Blue Kentucky Girl come from her own pen...
- recordcollectormag.com
2013-05-24
★★★★★
Nashville's leading proto-feminist is arguably sending mixed messages on the eyebrow-raising sleeve of 1969's Your Squaw Is On The Warpath. Here's Lynn, the scourge of selfish feckless manhood, tarted-up as a tomahawk-wielding Native American flashing a liberal amount of shapely thigh; though the album's contents find her striking several blows for independently-minded saloon gals...
- recordcollectormag.com
2013-04-02
★★★★★
Nashville's leading proto-feminist is arguably sending mixed messages on the eyebrow-raising sleeve of 1969's Your Squaw Is On The Warpath. Here's Lynn, the scourge of selfish feckless manhood, tarted-up as a tomahawk-wielding Native American flashing a liberal amount of shapely thigh; though the album's contents find her striking several blows for independently-minded saloon gals...
- www.recordcollectormag.com
2012-01-02
★★★★★
When Jack White dedicated 'White Blood Cells' to the original Queen of Country, the wheels of collaboration were slowly set in motion. Three years later, the result is the White produced Van Lear Rose. Is it a marriage made in country heaven, or should the results end in 'D.I.V.O.R.C.E'?Luckily for us what is captured is the essence of greatness...
- www.gigwise.com
2010-11-09
★★★★★
It's one of those weird collaborations that's just crazy enough to work: It's produced and arranged by Jack White of The White Stripes. For sure White brings the licks on this scattershot album which, track-wise, alternates between trad and rad, with the latter sometimes characterized by guitar heroics that seem out of place (and Portland Oregon, White's duet with Loretta, provides a big soupy example)...
- www.hour.ca
2010-11-02
★★★★★
After taking a hiatus through most of the 1990s first to care for and then to mourn her husband of 48 years, Oliver "Doo" Lynn, Loretta Lynn has come charging back with a vengeance. And believe me, that's a bit of an understatement. Van Lear Rose, with its punked-up production coming courtesy of Jack White (White Stripes), gazes beyond the present of the country genre to its future, while at the same time mining its past, and Loretta Lynn's own, for inspiration...
- www.adequacy.net
2009-07-21
★★★★★
Loretta Lynn was already a mother of four by the time she recorded her legendary debut single, I'm A Honky Tonk Girl, in 1960 at the age of 26. Since then, she has enjoyed four decades of hits, but while her sister Crystal Gayle always sugared the pill, Lynn's career has been defined by her no-nonsense approach to matters of the heart. This set, her first since 2000's Still Country, was no exception, and the result remains an enthralling, personal album...
- www.mojo4music.com
2009-07-21
★★★★★
Each (short) side closes off with the obligatory domestic bromide. But the other nine songs--including six by the singer and two by Shel Silverstein--embody Lynn's notion of female liberation. This notion isn't very sisterly--the only other woman who appears here is headed for Fist City--but does break through the male-identified dead ends of a Tammy Wynette...
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-17
★★★★★
Like any country workhorse, Lynn customarily pads her three or four albums a year with the popular songs of the day. Here the unadorned sexuality of "Help Me Make It Through the Night" and the white gospel roots of "Put Your Hand in the Hand" prove that for a great natural singer remakes needn't be a waste. But then there's "Rose Garden." And "Me and Bobby McGee."
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-17
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