MUSIC REVIEW: Rosanne Cash

Black Cadillac Capitol
Music •••• Sound ••••
As we learned from Rosanne Cash's Interiors (1990) and Rules of Travel (2003), the former country hitmaker and now urban singer/songwriter isn't one to flinch when confronting life's hard truths. Black Cadillac is a serious-minded concept album, dealing with the emotions stirred by the recent deaths of her parents - legendary father Johnny and his first wife, Vivian Liberto - as well as her stepmother, June Carter Cash. Even with the high profiles involved, the reflections about relationships and mortality could fit anyone striving to cope with grief. How ironic that the best songs here - the brooding title track, the open-aired "House on the Lake," and the Neil Young/"Helpless"-like "The World Unseen" - all resonate with the kind of honesty that her old genre used to be all about.

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