#0102: Don't Come Home A-drinkin' (With Lovin' On Your Mind) - Loretta Lynn

I'm guessing this will be a country album.  Country albums have not fared well with my ears.  And that's all the prologue I'm prepared to give.

The opening guitar line is great, I have to say.  It's all that country 6th twangy bollocks but it's well executed.  But then we're into the pedestrian moaning.  The title track's perspective is of a woman who wishes her man would just stay out all night and get a hooker rather come home stinking and try to woo her with his petrol breath.  Maybe there is a hidden domestic abuse theme here.  Who knows what women were unable to sing about in those days that had to be encoded in what we now know is a common vehicle for marital rape and other abuse.

These songs are a mix of 2 basic types alternating without deviation across the entire track list.  The steady 4 boom-chuck-b-boom-chuck, the gummy blues - and by that I mean blues has teeth and these are just andante waltzes with that insipid lap steel sound. 

Her voice carries the songs well and as far as vocal quality goes, I prefer her to the likes of Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette who just sound like whiny white trash.  But competent singing doesn't stop this feeling like listening to your granny's tales of how she used to go out dancing without being able to balance your boredom with the knowledge that you will one day want to remember how she spoke about her youth, how her face would glow with the memories and how its pallor in her last days broke your heart to see the life force dissipating.  But because you listened to her stories, you could feel sadness without guilt for having wasted your time together.

But Loretta Lynn is not my granny.  She's just some fucking boring country singer.  And her album is total shit.  One star for her voice.