Rosanne Cash – Seven Year Ache/King’s Record Shop/Interiors

The re-release of these three remarkable albums provides the chance to hear some true milestones from this artist’s surprising, very substantial career — from the perspective of 15 to nearly 25 years later. Together, they underscore afresh the impact Rosanne Cash has had on both contemporary country music and “singer-songwriter adult urban alternative.” These recordings were influential enough that it can be less apparent, so long after their release, how drastically different and fresh they were as they showed up across the ’80s.

The Rodney Crowell-produced Seven Year Ache (1981) was fairly revolutionary, from a country music perspective. The hit “Blue Moon With Heartache” and Rosanne’s turn on Merle Haggard and Red Simpson’s “You Don’t Have Very Far To Go” are virtually blueprints for the elegantly moody sound of many country ballads since. (They’re also as plaintive, puzzled and tending toward romanticizing victimization as latter-day female country lyrics would often be — and Rosanne’s wouldn’t.)

The bing-bong and swoosh keyboard sounds and airy, multi-tracked vocals throughout are much more L.A. than Nashville — which yields a truly fresh, modern rock and country synthesis for “My Baby Think He’s A Train” and Steve Forbert’s “What Kind Of Girl?” Rosanne wrote only two songs — “Blue Moon” and the title track — but both were hits. The musicians are often found on the Rodney and Emmylou records of the time (Emory Gordy, Hank DeVito, Tony Brown) but sound quite different as Crowell and Cash work out this singular twang/pop fusion; the most dated parts of the outing still show leftover ’70s Linda Ronstadt album tones. Those wouldn’t be around long.

King’s Record Shop, from 1987, was spectacular, different — and properly received as such. Crowell’s still producing, but the players have changed; the electric guitar of Steuart Smith dominates as the music works a perfect spot along the country-rock continuum, veering a little further toward pop now. On these songs, you don’t have to decide what format they are, or care. The musical execution is spectacular throughout, and the singing often brilliantly on target, reminding us how much this woman can do as an interpreter.

Rosanne’s moments of introspection here (“The Real Me”) seem, in retrospect, not as pointed or revealing as what would come after, and the lasting hits were all by others — John Hiatt’s “The Way We Make A Broken Heart”, the charming take on dad Johnny’s “Tennessee Flat Top Box”, and, especially, John Stewart’s “Runaway Train”. To these ears, that last one — from its “working up steam” opening through its every hook, line and sweeping sinker — is simply one of the great American singles, period.

By Interiors (1990), her marriage with Crowell was famously crumbling, and the songs relentlessly look at, as the title suggests, the inside and outside of why and how that was. It’s telling now to see that in this cycle of songs, almost entirely written and produced by Rosanne, she’s moved on her own toward gutsy introspective exploration, frankness, musical daring outside of pop restraints, and more intimate, near-jazz-like tones. (Michael Rhodes’ upright bass predominates.)

The oversimplistic version of the Rosanne story suggests she moved from Nashville country pop, when married to Crowell in Nashville, to more urban, less-hooky music when married to John Leventhal in New York. This lasting album shows a more complicated picture. It’s a peculiarity of these albums that they seem to hit special peaks not in opening or exiting cuts, but right in the middle, around tracks 5 to 7. On Interiors, that takes us to “This World” and “What We Really Want”, which open the road to what Rosanne’s been doing so successfully ever since.

The bonus tracks are sparse; in most cases, they’re not very different, featuring early ’90s live versions of hits from the three CDs as played by the later John Leventhal-Larry Campbell band. Amusingly, Rosanne’s vocals often sound cleaner in these live recordings, because the ’80s-style production mucking with vocals is absent!