Last month, I wrote about the haunting September When It Comes by Rosanne Cash. On that song, a duet with her father (the late, great Johnny Cash) from right before he died, she sang about the anticipation of loss. The theme is continued on her new album Black Cadillac but this time, the subject is the actualization of that loss.
And she has a lot to draw from. In the space of a couple years she lost her father, her stepmother (June Carter Cash), and her mother (Vivian Cash Distin). As a firm believer in the importance of music as catharsis, I hope that making this album ended up helping her through those deaths and their aftermath. It certainly sounds like it did.
Often dark, lonely, and angry (some song titles: like “Black Cadillac,” “Burn Down This Town,” and “World Without Sound”), it is also hopeful, pure, and full of grace. It would have been easy to discover easy answers to the loss of loved ones: in religion, or simply in trite aphorisms, but Cash does not look for easy solutions. She cannot say for sure that, in the end, it was all worthwhile. Nor can she be sure that their lives were lived as they ought to have been. She knows there is much that could have been said, and that, if there can be no doubt that they loved, there can also be no doubt that they ought to have loved better.
“I wish I was a Christian, and knew just what to believe” she muses on “World Without Sound.” The irony is clear, but we cannot help but feel that there is a genuine desire for the comfort that comes from faith.
And yet, she remains unbowed. For, if love never manifests itself perfectly, and if life sometimes feels bereft of purpose or meaning, it is not the end. We live cut adrift but sometimes, if we’re lucky, we experience those moments of sublime perfection when the currents bring us into harmony. And many other times, if there is no perfection, there can be comfort and beauty in discordance. Her lyrics often cut deeply, but that is what makes the fundamental optimism so powerful.
Musically, the album runs the gamut from the traditional country and western tunes to more folk-influenced numbers, with healthy dabs of soul, R&D, rockabilly, blues, and just a hint of piano balladry. In spite of the different styles, it posesses a strong underlying unity–this is an album that deserves to be heard in its entirety–but in accordance with some of its themes, much of that unity comes from the melding of occasionally dissonant parts.
The long and short of it is that Black Cadillac is her best album yet, and frankly, I think it’s better than anything her dad ever did.
It has received a modest amount of press because of the fame of her family (and the popularity of Walk the Line), but I think that misses the point. The fact that her father was famous is tangential at best. This is an intensely personal record, and would be just as affecting if I had never heard of the rest of her family. I hope that the story around it draws in some listeners who might otherwise have missed this album, but this should only be a starting point. This music is revalatory on its own terms, not necessarily as a part of the Johnny/June/Vivian myth.
There are no weak songs, and far more good and great moments than I can discuss while holding onto any kind of brevity. But a few of the highlights:
Black Cadillac
The opening track, it begins with the disembodied voice of her father and then lurches into a bluesy bass-driven beat. And the first line sets the tone for the entire record: “It was a black cadillac that drove you away / Everybody’s talking, but they don’t have much to say.” The organ makes a number of ghostly appearances, and as the song concludes, the horns from “Ring of Fire” make an appearance. All of these effects convey the surreality of loss, the feeling that, like the “ghost limbs” of an amputee, our loved ones are never completely gone, even when they are forever beyond the veil of our conscious understanding.
I can’t think of any word that could describe this song except “wrenching.” Essentially just her and the piano, it begins with her the unborn Rosanne watching her parents wedding from some unknown place: “And I was watching you from above, cause long before life, there was love .” In the second verse, the marriage is breaking apart: “When it all falls apart, there is love.” And, in the final verse, she watches her father slip away and now it is him, watching from above: “Long after life, there is love.” Her voice is used to fine effect on this song–much like her father she is not a particularly adept singer in a classical sense, but can pack in emotion far beyond her vocal range.
One of the most rocking songs on the record, it shows that she can let loose with the best of them. Here, she clearly states that she will not succumb to false hopes, and will not let grief, or memory of past happiness, obstruct her. “I want to live in the real world/I want to act like a real girl/I want to know I’m not alone/And that dreams are not my home.”
A few other great tracks are the acoustic and jangly “God Is in the Roses” and “The World Unseen” which has much the same feel as “I Was Watching You.” Seriously, go buy this album.