We had to wait an extra year for Loretta Lynn’s new album, but it was worth it.

Loretta Lynn has, for the better part of a near 60 year career, never been shy about taking anyone to task. Not her husband, not the women who intrude upon her marriage and not even her home state.

Tucked away — 11 songs in, to be exact — on her new “Wouldn’t It Be Great” album, Lynn goes dark to summon the traditional murder ballad, “Lulie Vars.” It’s the only tune on the record the country music matriarch didn’t write or co-write, but the instant she references Elkhorn City as the locale where the doomed lovers are to be wed, the song becomes her own. Then, after a scant two-and-a-half minutes, Lynn reveals poor Lulie’s fate — a trip to the bottom of a river courtesy of 30 pounds of railroad iron and a not-so- loving push from her betrothed, a soldier named John Carter, who lives out his life in incarceration.

Lynn’s singing is almost stoically unsentimental and curiously youthful. Giving “Lulie Vars” an even bigger chill is the coincidental fact that the album’s co-producer is also named John Carter — John Carter Cash, that is. He’s the son of Johnny Cash, who handled production duties on “Wouldn’t It Be Great” with Lynn’s daughter, Patsy Lynn Russell.

“Wouldn’t It Be Great,” which hits stores Friday, after a year-long delay, is the third in a series of Cash/Russell produced albums that present the elder Lynn’s immovable sense of country music tradition in all its clear, unadorned and unapologetically old school glory.

The collaboration is not at all unlike the remarkable victory lap recordings new generation producer Rick Rubin cut with the elder Cash during the final stages of his career. While “Wouldn’t It Be Great” also abounds with the kind of sunny vocal disposition that has long distinguished Lynn’s music, songs like “Lulie Vars” reveal her readiness to step into the shadows at times.

There are shades throughout the new album that enforce the kind of plain-speaking demeanor that has long been as prevalent in Lynn’s songs along with her boundless vocal cheer. Some are brand new, like a masterful tale of honky tonk retribution called “Ruby’s Stool” that rivals Lynn chestnuts like “You Ain’t Woman Enough (to Take My Man).” Lynn fumes silently at the vision of another woman dancing with her man, but isn’t so nonplused to keep from dumping a full ashtray into the would-be homewrecker’s beer (“I can’t wait to see her drinking from that can”).

Others are revisited classics, like “Don’t Come a Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ On Your Mind),” where the singer reads a sobering riot act to her partner. The song became Lynn’s first No.1 country hit in early 1967.

Speaking of boozing it up, the album-opening title tune to “Wouldn’t It Be Great” is a quiet reflection that reveals its intent in the song’s first line: “Wouldn’t it be fine if you could say you love me just one time… with a sober mind.” Lynn cut the song twice before (in 1985 and 1993), but this square off between a loved one and the bottle (which eerily echoes Lynn’s longtime marriage to Oliver “Doolittle” Lynn) is made all the more disparaging by the arrangement’s starkness, not to mention the remorseful sting in the vocal delivery.

“Wouldn’t It Be Great” was scheduled for release in August 2017, but was delayed so the now 86-year old singer could convalesce from a stroke. Hearing how hearty she sounds on these tracks, one can only hope the next chapter in the Cash/Russell-produced catalogue will reach our ears without any further health-related delays. That would be great, indeed.

Dwight Yoakam returns to EKU

How appropriate that on the same weekend Loretta Lynn releases her new album, another Kentucky-born country great comes home for a show.

Sunday (Sept. 30), Dwight Yoakam returns to the EKU Center for the Arts, 1 Hall Drive in Richmond. The Pikeville-born singer and Kentucky Music Hall of Famer has long been one of the great torchbearers of the Buck Owens-bred Bakersfield sound, although Yoakam has added everything from mariachi brass to soul music solace to songs along the way. His most recent album, 2016’s “Swimmin’ Pools, Movie Stars,” re- imagines a series of vintage Yoakam hits (“Guitars, Cadillacs” and “Please, Please Baby,” among them) as well as an unexpected cover of the Prince classic “Purple Rain” in a bluegrass savvy setting.

Expect a little home state camaraderie and competition on Sunday, as well. When Yoakam last played the EKU Center in October 2013, he made no secrets about where his college football allegiance stood. “Not to be a little bit of a traitor to Lexington,” he said prior to the show, “But I’m going to play down there with the Colonels.”

Showtime for Sunday’s concert is 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $50-$70 at 859-622-7469 or EKUcenter.com.