Black Cadillac : Rosanne Cash : Review : Rolling Stone

This record -- Rosanne Cash's best and darkest since the intimate noir of 1990's Interiors -- is for and about ghosts: her stepmother, June, and father, Johnny, who both died in 2003; and her mother, Vivian, Johnny's first wife, who passed away as Rosanne finished the album in 2005. The first thing you hear is Johnny, recorded at home in the Fifties, calling tenderly to his young daughter. But this is not a prelude to mourning. The title track, actually written before his death, is about vigil: the long wait before staggering loss. "One of us gets to go to heaven/One has to stay here in hell," Rosanne sings against brooding garage rock, in a whisper etched with worry. Yet the greater fight in these songs, all written or co-written by Rosanne, is for light: the peace and understanding that come from confronting anger and re-examining memories. The documentary detail is striking. In "I Was Watching You," Rosanne looks back at the innocent adventure of her parents' wedding and how she struggled with hurt and anxiety as Johnny found new life with June. The exhausted acceptance of "God Is in the Roses" (and "in the thorns") is followed by the acute missing in "House on the Lake," a song about the echoes of music and love still alive in a home now on the auction block. And at every turn -- high-mountain balladry, brassy R&B, near-metallic blues rock -- Rosanne sings of coming through loss with a poise and confessional will that are utterly country and absolutely in the family tradition.