Rosanne Cash’s Subtle Brilliance

Rosanne Cash writes with such subtle brilliance that glints of new insights shine off every facet of her gem-like songs. The songs on her new album, She Remembers Everything, cast a light on the weariness of traveling through a broken relationship, the love and hope that persist in a relationship that has weathered many miles, and the enduring strength of an individual voice speaking constantly to name its speaker’s identity so that she’s not forgotten. The songs capture our efforts to travel through time and space, always seeking to remember the moments that have made us, as well as the moments we have forgotten, or want to forget (or that society wants to erase from our memories), and seeking to embrace memory as the liberating force it is.

The album’s opening song, “The Only Thing Worth Fighting For,” functions as a mini-lesson in songwriting. The opening stanza sets a hauntingly empty scene, evoking the emptiness with “dusty books” and “quiet dreams.” Images of vision (“pictures on the mantle”) and sound (“forgotten tunes,” pictures that “speak your name”) float through the verse, propelling the singer to continue searching for the spirits that just elude her. The first two lines vividly mimic the ways that a sleepless state resembles a state of disbelief or incomprehension: “Waking up is harder than it seems / wandering through these empty rooms.” The singer resists waking up fully, too, for fear of hearing fully those “forgotten tunes” that the pictures “speak”; as long as she’s asleep the songs play “just outside the pain.” At the end of the second verse comes a jarring and brilliant juxtaposition to describe loss and the ways relationships falter into desolate “holy wars” and missed connections: “Weren’t we like a battlefield / locked inside a holy war / your love and my due diligence / the only thing worth fighting for.” Cash’s pairing “your love” and “my due diligence” perfectly captures the raggedness and wariness of love.

Most of the songs on Cash’s album move in a sonic spaciousness that she and John Leventhal create with sparse musical arrangements. “The Undiscovered Country” opens with an echoing guitar that shimmers, guiding us into Cash’s flowing vocals that celebrate the beauties and mysteries of love. The song unfolds like a flower, revealing its intricacies and releasing its vulnerabilities to the world. Kris Kristofferson and Elvis Costello lend their voices to the minor-chord lament, “8 Gods of Harlem,” a petition to the forces that might be able to bring change to the devastating brutality surrounding young lives cut down by gunfire: “We pray to the god / of old illusions / we pray to the god / of wasted chances / we pray to the god / of dreams and roses / we pray to them all / the 8 gods of Harlem.” “Rabbit Hole,” which Cash wrote for her friends Joe Henry and Billy Bragg, is a paean to the power of song and storytelling and its ability pull the singer outside of herself. “Everyone but Me” opens sparely with Leventhal on piano, blossoming when Cash’s vocals float over and between the chords. As strings flow into the arrangement, the vocals grow more powerful, as the singer claims her own identity.

The title track opens with dark, dream-like minor chords before moving into an almost fugue-like state that mimics vividly the ways that sleep and wakefulness resemble memory and forgetting. The chorus offers another lesson in songwriting, with its images of opposites (“enemy,” “treasured friend”) and images of bitterness and brokenness (“my bitter pill,” “my broken vow”) coexisting within one individual. Sam Phillips, who wrote the music, sings harmony vocals.

In her memoir, Composed, Cash wrote: “I am both ennobled by words and rhyme. The songs have been an attempt to discover the mysteries. In a more proscribed way, my life is contained entirely in my songs.” While she was then describing a different set of songs, her words can just as easily be applied to She Remembers Everything. Cash’s songs encourage us to embrace those memories that too often keep us in a dreaming state, refusing to acknowledge the rooms where the pictures are hung, and to wake up and walk away from or walk into the worlds — whether it’s in matters of love or in matters of social justice — that call for us to be present.