Album Review: Rosanne Cash - "Black Cadilac"

To be honest, I'm not sure why I picked this album up. Something about the cover art and the name, I guess, but I wasn't really sure what I was getting myself into.

The album was a pleasant surprise, a folk rock album with some rather good lyrics. Rosanne Cash, daughter of the late, great Johnny Cash, got her dad's voice and knows how to use it. Her lyrics are poetic and well-written and the melodies are hauntingly good. This album is clearly about the loss of all her parental figures (her dad, stepmom and mom) over a short period time. The grief and sadness is apparent throughout the album and really makes you sympathize with her.

Allana Nash put it better then I could:

Producers John Leventhal and Bill Bottrell dot the lean, atmospheric, and genre-blending production with instrumental hallmarks that recall both the Appalachian sound of the Carter Family and the work of J.R. Cash (the horns in the title cut pay homage to those in "Ring of Fire"). But while elegiac, Black Cadillac never turns maudlin or morphs into a tribute record to a fallen icon. Instead, this extraordinary, intensely moving work is made up of dreamy and deeply personal pages from a psychic scrapbook, delivered on the cashmere-and-corduroy voice of one of music's purest and most visionary artists.

This album was enjoyable and I'd recommend it. Although I would be wary of picking this album up if acoustic folk rock isn't your thing.

She is playing the Morristown Community Theatre on Sunday; check her out if you can.