[...] Rosanne Cash was resplendent and unhurried, leading a band that earned its climaxes and spread its arms and legs out into the wide expanses of its music, brushing aside sound problems and milking its moment.
Cash, the eldest daughter of country royalty, has made an admirable career out of straddling the country/folk-pop divide, with a near equal balance of graceful C&W and moody folk that mines territory familiar to Melissa Etheridge and Indigo Girls fans. She's gotten a lot of mileage out of a 2009 album called
The List, a collection of interpretations of essential songs Johnny Cash is said to have passed along, and at the Beacon, it was those songs that had the richest flavors, the tastiest finishes and the most resonance, from "Long Black Veil" to Bobbie Gentry's still-wondrous "Ode to Billie Joe", performed by Cash in a stripped-down duo with her lead guitarist (and husband) John Leventhal. Whereas the Jayhawks sort of let their set happen, Cash was in tight control, from the drama that oozed from her songs to the fun of collaboration with her bandmates. Louris emerged mid-set for a delicious duet with Cash on her "Seven Year Ache", and it was some of his most relaxed playing and singing of the evening.
The arc of her set was near-perfect. A dramatic release came during "Girl from the North Country", which Cash introduced as something Bob Dylan had rendered as an "Elizabethan folk song", and whose version, in Cash's hands, was haunting and lonesome -- a hypnotic experience that stopped time as Cash peeled back verses, line by line, and let them marinate.
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