Details
Track Listing
1. Price of Temptation
2. If I Were a Man
3. Summer I Read Collette, The
4. Western Wall
5. Bells & Roses
6. List of Burdens
7. Child of Steel
8. Just Don't Talk About It
9. I Want to Know
10. Take My Body
11. Mid-Air
| Details | | Producer: | John Leventhal, Rosanne Cash | | Distributor: | EMI Music Distribution | | Recording Type: | Studio | | Recording Mode: | Stereo | | SPAR Code: | n/a |
Album Notes
Personnel: Rosanne Cash (vocals, acoustic guitar, piano); John Leventhal (acoustic & electric guitars, keyboards, bass, percussion); Larry Campbell (acoustic & electric guitars, background vocals); Lincoln Schleifer (bass, percussion).
Principally recorded at 12th Street Studio, New York, New York. Includes liner notes by Gary Gersh.
Rosanne Cash's music has always been more cerebral than that of her Nashville peers--constantly searching for the flood of insight where others settled for simple sentiment or low-brow entertainment. Early in her career, she was a lot choosier than most in picking her material, and then in investing the tracks with her ragged voice of experience and urban country-rock grit. But with time, Cash has elevated the craftsmanship of her own songs to the foreground. Always a wonderful interpreter, she has become a powerful and expressive writer in her own right, analyzing her own divorce and her move from Nashville to New York in self-reflective album-length sessions.
If there's a unifying theme to the 11-track 10 SONG DEMO, it is Cash's songwriting and her underlying source of inspiration. The title implies these works are bareboned and raw, and the sound of Cash accompanied by sparse instrumentation in understated fashion gives the listener the impression of being close to the heart of artistic creation. Of the lyrics--which always turn to the artist and her world--most insightful is the mid-tempo "The Summer I Read Collette." As much an homage to French writer Sidonie Gabrielle Claudine Colette as a peek at Cash's inspirational urges and metaphoric playfulness, the song describes the thrill of discovering a writer notorious for mixing real-life and fiction (self-reference?), and points directly to the source of Cash's creative spark. The song is a moment of Joycean revelation, a chapter of Cash's portrait of an artist.
Industry Reviews
3 Stars - Good - ...the arrangements don't sound unfinished as much as they sound stripped to their essence...
Rolling Stone (03/09/1996)
...Her new songs are about desolation and faith and loss, using primal images: tears, blood, fire. She sings about staying honest even at the price of pain and loneliness....Her voice trembles with ache and determination...
New York Times (03/31/1996)
4 Stars - Excellent - ...Cash...writes songs which seem made for a minimum of elaboration....Cash filters emotion through a sharp intelligence, the neat lyrics joining simple, effective tunes...
Q (09/01/1996)
...DEMO's spare arrangements reinforce the sturdiness of her melodies... - Rating: B
Entertainment Weekly (04/12/1996)
...one of the tastiest cakes Rosanne's ever baked, a luminous collection of reflective songs supported by John Leventhal's simple instrumental back-shading. Simply satisfying.
Mojo (06/01/1996)
...Her new songs are about desolation and faith and loss, using primal images: tears, blood, fire. She sings about staying honest even at the price of pain and loneliness....Her voice trembles with ache and determination...
New York Times (03/31/1996)
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