FEATURED REVIEW.............................................................27 FEB 2006
 |
Artist:
ROSANNE CASH |
Funeral poetry is garbage. Americans have no time for literature. They don't read. Zip, zilch, nada, nothin'. Unless Oprah recommends it, and, well, she can't exactly pick 'em. And poetry? Don't even get me started. Someone has to die before you can get your average Joe to pick up a poem. Literally. And when someone does die, every amateur hack in the family is ready to whip out his eulogy and piss all over the proceedings. Flowers, angels...blah blah blah...rainbows, tears and teddy bears--all done up in perfectly metered iambs, with a cute little ABAB rhyme scheme to boot. And everybody gushes, "Gosh, Susie is just sooooo artistic. She wrote that poem herself, you know. Wasn't it just be-yoo-tuh-ful?"
I used to think that people were just being polite, that they actually knew better and merely didn't feel like raining bile on dark days. I was wrong. People don't know better. People are morons. They like maudlin sentimentality, ham-fisted imagery, and lyrical simplicity. Anything more complicated than a child's birthday card is just too damn hard.
Which brings me to Rosanne Cash's new album. The rockcritic types are falling all over themselves in praise of Black Cadillac, trotting out the tragedy of her parents' passing like so many addled sportscasters. (What the hell is wrong with the sporting world, anyway? You can't sit through ten minutes of any major sports broadcast without at least three absurdly garish "human interest" stories. So-and-so is playing despite the sudden death of his brother-in-law, somebody else's father lost a leg last week, and the third baseman, bless his heart, was abandoned in a dumpster as a child, where he lived for fourteen days on pineapple rinds and rainwater.)
Rosanne Cash's stepmother (the venerable June Carter Cash) died on May 15, 2003. The legendary Johnny died on September 12, 2003. Rosanne's mother--Vivian Liberto--died on May 24, 2005. There you have it. A mother, a father, and a stepmother--all dead within 24 months. Devastating, certainly. Rosanne responded by writing an album, and, for all I know, Black Cadillac may well have been a cathartic success. As a work of art, however, it is an unqualified failure.
Like your average lousy funeral poem, Black Cadillac contains a preponderance of hearts and roses (a violation of our interdiction against "Apron Imagery"--see the Cheezeball Manifesto §3.r). From the "heart of black pain" that she's wearing in the title track, to "the roses in the garden" in "House on the Lake," Cash is unable to imagine anything beyond a stock collection of stale funereal symbols. "God Is in the Roses" is the album in microcosm. A representative verse:
"God is in the roses,
The petals and the thorns,
Storms out on the oceans,
Souls who will be born."
What, are we all in seventh grade? What kind of inane twaddle is this? Even when Cash makes a concerted attempt to rework hackneyed imagery, the effort falls flat. "I'm the rainbow in the dirt," she sings in ""The World Unseen," "Now that we must live apart / I have a lock of hair and one half of my heart." Uh, whatever dude.
The album's low point is the insufferable "I Was Watching You," an entirely preposterous tale of otherworldly surveillance. In the first verse, an unborn Rosanne witnesses her own parents' wedding: "I was watching you from above / 'Cause long before life there is love." It's f*cking precious. By the song's end, Johnny has died and the oh-so-predictable reversal has occurred: "Now I hear you say / I'll be watching you from above / 'Cause long after life, there is love."
Lest you fear that I'm only objecting to a few insipid lyrics, let me assure you that Black Cadillac commits plenty of other cheeze-based offenses as well--from the tacky mariachi horns that punctuate "Black Cadillac" (clumsily referencing "Ring of Fire"), to the superfluous backing chorus that mars the otherwise infectious "Burn Down This Town," to the unnecessary drum machine on "Like Fugitives."
In fairness, the album does represent a "return to country music" for Ms. Cash, and she does--for the most part--resist cornpone religiosity. Nevertheless, if you give this one a listen, you'll have lines like "I gave my love and it rose like a wave" rattling around in your head for weeks.
In summation: The musical equivalent of a Hummel figurine. Three cheezeballs.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A NOTE ON THE RATING SYSTEM:
5 CHEEZEBALLS = UNLISTENABLE SCHLOCK
3 CHEEZEBALLS = A DIFFICULT SLOG
1 CHEEZEBALL = THE ODD FORGIVABLE MISSTEP
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------