The Album Rosanne Cash Was Born to Make, 4 out of 5 StarsRosanne Cash has been building a steady and solid string of work since releasing Rules of Travel and Black Cadillac. On each of those records, she was hitting dreadful emotional patches (divorce on "Rules," the deaths of Johnny and June Carter Cash on "Cadillac") and channelling it through her music. Where the excellent "Cadillac" mourned her parents, "The List" moves to pay tribute. The story in the disc explains that in 1973, Johnny was upset that young Rosanne was unfamiliar with the country classics of yore and compiled a 100 song list of music he found essential. Rosanne saved that list for 35 years, and decided that now was the time to mine the source material her father had so much respect for.
"The List" comes up beautifully on all counts. Moving between Hank Williams and Bob Dylan with tasteful, spare backing (mostly husband John Leventhal working the one man band format), Cash invests these songs with her pure voice. She gets to her family by hitting "Bury Me Under The Weeping Willow," and follows her father's vision of Dylan on "Girl From The North Country." She doesn't reinterpret those so much as sculpt them to her voice and emotions. And while she also has a host of guests here, none of them overwhelm. In fact, Bruce Springsteen turns in an eerily echo of Johnny Cash when he sings along with Rosanne on "Sea Of Heartbreak."
The other singers, Elvis Costello, Jeff Tweedy and Rufus Wainwright don't do much more than shadow Rosanne; Tweedy and Wainwright are barely recognizable. "The List" belongs to Rosanne Cash. The temptation to bump this to five stars is hard to resist, as this feels like it will be on my list of favorites for the year, but "The List" is both what a cover/tribute album should be and one of Rosanne's personal bests.
No comments:
Post a Comment