HOW does a country music icon catch the eye of a new audience after 70 albums?

Instead of facelifts and bespoke breasts, Nashville dowager Loretta Lynn has elected for deeper impact than cosmetic surgery, booking in with the good doctor Jack White, 40 years her junior. Detroit revivalist Jack has already put colour in the cheeks of the blues in The White Stripes and re-visited Appalachian roots music on the Cold Mountain soundtrack. Having dedicated The White Stripes' White Blood Cells album to Loretta, now he applies his missionary medicine to the idol he calls "the greatest female singer/songwriter of the 20th century". Jack produces and arranges, plays his guitars, organ, piano and percussion, and sings a sexually-sparked duet with Loretta on the psychedelic, country-rocking Portland, Oregon. Loretta comes up with her first ever fully self-penned album, her gritty, dignified, blue-collar songs given a contemporary yet old-fashioned workout by gentleman Jack in the no-frills way that Rick Rubin re-awakened Johnny Cash on his quartet of sparse American Recordings. Like Serge Gainsbourg and Brigit Bardot, Terry Hall and Sinead O'Connor, Nick Cave and Kylie, Loretta and Jack is one mighty swell unlikely musical union.

Updated: 09:59 Thursday, May 13, 2004