You might get the mistaken idea that Rosanne Cash is male-defined. Aside from the obvious reasons–father Johnny made country music her birthright, husband-producer Rodney Crowell lets her borrow his backup band–there's the music itself. On her fine, hard-edged second album, Seven Year Ache, Cash does a cunning variation on a trick that female rock & rollers have been pulling for a long time (but few as obsessively or wittily). She takes tunes by men and about men and switches the gender, crooning–in her unmannered, wafting tenor–all those plots about leaving lovers and getting the urge to light out for the territory.

Cash renders these time-tired male themes as women's work, and the result is an exhilarating country-rock record. Whether she's turning Steve Forbert's "What Kinda Guy" into "What Kinda Girl" or claiming Keith Sykes' tough-guy imagery in "Rainin'" as her own, the singer remains pleasingly aloof. She never succumbs to macho posturing to give her tales punch. Cash's strength resides in an ironic restraint that makes the songs she's written here – the easy-rocking "Seven Year Ache" and the baleful "Blue Moon with Heartache" ("I'll play the victim for you, honey, but not for long")–seem all the more private and poignant.

This is a strategy so far from being male-defined that, when she's in top form, Rosanne Cash sounds better–stronger, slyer, funnier – than just about any pop singer around right now. (RS 345)

KEN TUCKER