Roseanne Cash – Black Cadillac

Artist: Roseanne Cash

Title: Black Cadillac

Label: Capitol

Rating: 7/10

CORPORATE LINE: “I couldn’t avoid them,” says Rosanne Cash about the twelve songs that constitute Black Cadillac, a breakthrough album that raises both the stakes and the standards for one of this country’s finest singer-songwriters. “I couldn’t let any of them simply return to the ether. Some of them literally wouldn’t let me sleep.”

For more than twenty-five years now, on such albums as Seven Year Ache (1981), Interiors (1990), 10 Song Demo (1996) and Rules of Travel (2003), Cash has made personal honesty a compelling signature of her songwriting. She has never been willing to turn away from difficult emotions or complex situations. Indeed, a writer first, she has found her truest voice in articulating the most heartbreaking emotional realities: betrayal, self-betrayal, loss, misunderstanding and isolation. But she also believes firmly in the limitless possibilities of personal redemption.

THE GREAT:
“Black Cadillac” – Rosanne Cash finds a way to release some of her grief as she tries to dealing with the loss of her father: “it was a black Cadillac that drove you away.”

THE AVERAGE:
“Burn Down This Town” – Not a barn burner—but finally a track that slips out of the doom and gloom.
“I Was Watching You” – Another track full of mourning and hope: “I’ll be watching you from above/ Because long after life there is love.”
“House On the Lake” – Rosanne Cash is better when the music is less sparkle and shine. There is too much polish to feel it. “The World Unseen” is another good example of this. Producer Bill Bottrell is trying to make Cash sound like everyone else and that’s a mistake.

THE BAD:
Nothing.

FRANKLY: It doesn’t seem fair to use the pun that Rosanne is cashing-in on her parents deaths. However, most of the songs are tributes and the album is getting a lot of attention because of her parents. Everything shakes out in the end. Black Cadillac has some high points. But if you’re not a fan of Rosanne Cash’s you may not find the album nearly interesting enough. Black Cadillac is made to appeal to the masses with a lot of spit and polish and that doesn’t do Cash justice.

+ Charlie Craine