Rhythm & Romance
Rosanne Cash (Columbia)
Some traditional country fans look askance at Rosanne Cash. With her punk-coiffed hair, her pouting image and her rockish musical tendencies, the daughter of their old hero Johnny Cash probably frightens them a little.
But she`s a stunning songwriter, and this LP contains eight songs she either wrote or cowrote, and they`re like the best kind of poetry: simple on the surface, yet more ambiguously beguiling with every hearing.
The album appears to profile a difficult but rewarding marriage and a protagonist who`s trying to satisfy both her individuality and her emotional need for a soul-mate. On the opening cut, ”Hold On,” Cash offers a rockier version of Barbara Mandrell-style rhythm & blues while adding a modern dimension to the old George Jones-Tammy Wynette theme.
”I Don`t Know Why You Don`t Want Me,” cowritten with husband Rodney Crowell, is a pop-rock song about two people who can`t seem to get into the same mood at the same time. ”Never Be You,” a Tom Petty song, is done in an appealing pop-soul fashion that is appropriate to its lyric.
`Second To No One” dramatically hushes the previous rock instrumentation to give an acoustic sound to a powerful, stark ballad of hurt. Side 1`s final cut, ”Halfway House,” turns up the volume again, combining smashing rock instrumentation with a sensitive description of a troubled relationship.
Side 2 opens with the album`s only other song that didn`t come from Cash`s pen: ”Pink Bedroom”–scalding, driving rock that she rides adeptly in describing young female rebellion.
”Never Alone” is a rockish ballad about how love is eternal despite the transience of its physical side. ”My Old Man” is a striking, acoustic plea for understanding for her father and his problems of age and, in a veiled way, apparently his tendency toward chemical dependency.
”Never Gonna Hurt” is a tough, hard-rock song of victory over a broken love affair, while the LP`s final cut, ”Closing Time,” is a tender, acoustic-oriented ballad about how in the previous song she was only fooling herself.
The sum of all these various parts–the songwriting craftsmanship, the multifaceted voice, the smoulderingly cool delivery and the deep sensitivity
–explains why, despite her comparative inactivity on the road, she is so popular.
