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Roseanne Cash MUSIC Black Cadillac
In a fair world, pop music would be judged for mere sonic quality, or, you know, artistic merit, or something. But smart consumers know better. For a world of gossip magazines, internet news, and SNL screw-ups, anything can work within context. To see Britney Spears embrace her whoredom, finally, without that not-a-girl-not-necessarily-a-woman fluff, made the orgy that was In the Zone even greater than it was.
But cultural context doesn't always work to one's advantage. Case in point: Rosanne Cash's latest offering drops after the death of her parents: legends Johnny Cash, stepmother June Carter Cash, and her mother, Vivian Liberto.The album's foundation upon that death and grief is what makes it so expected, so consistent and, ultimately, so lackluster.
In the tradition of Cash offerings,
everything here is good. "Black
Cadillac" opens in a post-grunge
crunch of guitars and driving rhythm.
Mariachi horns reference "Ring of
Fire." Oceana-influenced "Like a Wave"
is pleasant and haunting. Ballads
"God is in the Roses" and "The World
Unseen" are delicate, pianodrive odes to grief, death, life, and hope.
N ever one for overt sentimentality,
Cash now straddles a thin line between originality and cliché. Her lyrics, at times arresting and touching,
can turn to the dull and maudlin.
With her grief still fresh, Cash has difficulty distancing herself
from the emotion of her father's death,
unable to sift through the mess of anger and abandonment to come up with something musically conclusive.
But that rawness occasionally gets harnessed. "Radio Operator" is a fine piece of furious country-rock. "House on the Lake" is spooky and poignant, and gorgeous "I Was Watching You,"
makes the album's greatest, simplest point of love: transcending-life. These songs are what the album could have been -- an otherwise solid and loving tribute.
Nick Connell
★★★