Entertainment

10:36 AM CST on Tuesday, January 24, 2006

By MARIO TARRADELL / The Dallas Morning News

Maybe Rosanne Cash possesses psychic powers, as well as stellar songwriting talents. How else to explain the opening verse of her 10th studio album: "It was a black Cadillac/That drove you away/Now everybody's talking/But they don't have much to say/It was a black sky of rain/None of it fell/Now one of us gets to go to heaven/One has to stay here in hell."

She wrote that song six weeks before stepmother June Carter Cash's death, the first of Ms. Cash's three parents to die in a two-year period. "Black Cadillac" set the tone for the other 11 tunes on her chillingly beautiful CD, a tribute to her birth mother Vivian Liberto Cash Distin, June Carter and Johnny Cash.

Naturally, the central theme of Black Cadillac is the aftermath of death. More specifically, these songs search for the survivors of the tragedy. She questions the religious belief that the soul never perishes. She wonders how much love and hope and memory live and breathe once the coffin is buried. Then she seeks her own solace, especially in being the oldest and the daughter closest to her parents.

Yet in typical Rosanne Cash fashion, Black Cadillac isn't a weepy record. In none of these songs does she play the victim or ask for condolences. In fact, she's angry during "Like Fugitives," a brooding rocker she wrote after her mom's passing.

"It's a strange new world we live in," she sings with a sting in her husky voice, "Where the church leads you to hell/And the lawyers get the money/For the lives they divide and sell."

She reminisces about her father's cherished home in "House on the Lake," a wistful folk song about losing lives and hearth. On "Burn Down This Town," a country-blues corker, Ms. Cash evokes her dad's penchant for setting stuff on fire and uses it as a metaphor for her own ashen emotions.

Ms. Cash sounds confused yet resilient on "World Without Sound," a bluesy pop number where she name-drops Christians, Paris and John Lennon. And in the lovely country ballad "God Is in the Roses," she finally sounds peaceful, at least as much as she can be, given all the sadness in her life.

Death is final; Ms. Cash does understand that. But by the time she delivers "Good Intent," a historical paean to her Scottish ancestors and the first American Cash named William, it's clear to her that the impact of lives never passes.

BOTTOM LINE: The current success of Walk the Line and all things Johnny Cash will surely generate interest in Black Cadillac . Hey, whatever brings the listeners to the table. But what they'll discover is the talent of a woman who continues to honor her rich pedigree.

E-mail mtarradell@dallasnews.com

ABlack Cadillac

(Capitol)