Music Review: The List

When she was 18, Rosanne was traveling with her father, Johnny Cash. The late music master grew disturbed when his oldest daughter didn't know some of country's touchstone songs. So as the tour bus rambled down the road, he wrote a list of 100 songs he felt Rosanne should become familiar with. "Across the top [of the list] he wrote 100 Essential Country Songs," remembers Rosanne. "And he gave me the list at the end and he said, 'This is your education.'" On her new studio album, The List, Rosanne Cash has recorded twelve of these songs, and they are revelations. Cash's covers have an alt-country resonance. Actually, they sound more American than anything else. They feel lived in, perfect and new. Her versions of Sea of Heartbreak, I'm Moving On and Heartaches by the Number are just about definitive. On this album, Cash is joined in harmony by Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Jeff Tweedy and Rufus Wainwright who are essential. This is certainly a candidate for the best disc of the year. Twelve songs down, 88 to go.