The River & the Thread (Deluxe)

Although Rosanne Cash is the daughter of country music legend Johnny Cash—which her two album before The River had dealt with in various ways—she's been cultivating her own roots-informed adult-contemporary sound with her husband/collaborator John Leventhal ever since 1990’s excellent Interiors. 2006’s Black Cadillac meditated on the passings of her dad, her mother (Vivian Liberto), and her stepmother (June Carter Cash); 2009’s The List interpreted the country songs her father considered essential. She doesn’t take her lineage lightly. Here, “Etta’s Tune” is written in memory of family friend Marshall Grant, who’d also been a member of her dad’s band. Elsewhere, she sings of Jesus coming from Mississippi, the Tallahatchie Bridge from Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe,” and “Money Road,” where in 1955 a black teenager named Emmett Till spoke to a white woman in a move that cost him his life. A New Yorker with deep Southern roots, Cash understands—and has lived through—the complexities of culture. The deluxe edition includes three bonus songs, including covers of Townes Van Zandt’s “Two Girls” and Jesse Winchester’s “Biloxi.”