is about as iconic as female country music stars get, and she's been celebrated for her songwriting -- honest, eloquent, and often a brilliant expression of the realities of an adult's life -- as much as her singing. So it's at once fitting and curious that 2018's was produced with the express purpose of highlighting the songwriter -- her work certainly merits praise, but nearly every album is in some way a master class in country songwriting. Nevertheless, producers and (the latter is 's daughter) have designed as a songwriter's showcase, with new recordings of a few gems from her songbook sharing the set list with six new tunes, several written in collaboration with . Most of the performances on are built around low-key acoustic arrangements, with some stellar bluegrass pickers joining the studio band, including , , and . The music is full-bodied but mindful of dynamics, and serves well as a vocalist; her voice at the age of 86 is remarkably strong and limber, little changed from her salad days in the '60s and '70s, and if the reduced volume means she doesn't have to belt as hard, she is clearly still in firm command of her instrument. (And the livelier numbers like "Ruby's Stool" and "Don't Come Home a Drinkin'" show she hasn't abdicated her position as a honky tonk heroine.) The new songs are uniformly strong (especially "Another Bridge to Burn" and "I'm Dying for Someone to Live For"), and it's clear that hasn't lost her stride either as a composer or as a vocalist, which makes the presence of the remakes a bit puzzling. It's not as if hasn't already cut definitive versions of "Coal Miner's Daughter" or the title song, and while her new versions are very good, they're a long way from essential and feel a bit like padding. is proof that is still a vital artist and one of America's great treasures, but it might have been better if they'd waited long enough to let her write a full album's worth of material, or even if she'd included some covers she'd never recorded before. ~ Mark Deming