[rating=3.50]
It’s been some years since Carlene Carter began her music career consorting with Nick Lowe, Dave Edmunds and The Rumour back in 1979. In fact, Stronger is her first album of original material since 1995, a work of renewed creativity inspired in its own way, like that of sibling once-removed of Rosanne Cash’s Black Cadillac, by personal tragedies to which the cd title refers.
“The Bitter End” reaffirms how, over twenty-five years ago, Carlene predated what’s now accepted as modern country music. And it’s not just her lineage (she’s the daughter of June Carter who married Johnny Cash) that gives it authenticity; on “Change of Heart” and the stirring title song that closes this album as a most effective personal statement, Carter’s songs restore the truth to tried and true phrases without turning them into coy catchphrases or homilies.
Carter originals also take unpredictable musical turns, such as on “Bring Love,” where the piano bounces the performance into motion and the vocal refrain rides a swooping fiddle line. That’s no doubt a source of inspiration for accompanist/ producer John McFee, who plays virtually all the instruments throughout Stronger; a peripheral holdover from Carter’s early career (as a member of the California band Clover, he worked on the first Elvis Costello album produced by Nick Lowe), he simultaneously emphasizes spontaneity and avoids the rigidity that often comes with multiple overdubbing.
The saucy attitude that earmarked Carlen Carter’s persona close to thirty years ago remains in the form of songs like “I’m So Cool.” Not surprisingly, electric guitar and drums become prominent there. Yet as ebullient as is that track, it’s no more successful or heartfelt in its own way than “Spider Lace,” its quiet acoustic fingerpicking performed to waltz time.
As pure and emotionally evocative as is that cut, and “On to You,” where Carter illustrates how close a cousin blues is to country (courtesy a touch of harp), it makes the miscues that appear late in the album seem strictly minor. “Judgment Day” begins as r&b/gospel before turning soporific while “Light of Your Love” isn’t such a fresh turn on conventional songwriting or production as most of what precedes it.
