It has been almost twelve years since Carlene Carter released an album. The former bad girl of country music has endured a lot of tragedy during the past decade. Her mother, June Carter Cash, and stepfather, Johnny Cash, both passed away, followed by the death of her long-term partner Howie Epstein. Finally, her younger sister, Rosey, passed away in October of 2003. All this tragedy led to a relapse of her sobriety.<\/p>\n
But today finds Carlene Carter sober and married to actor Joseph Breem. It also finds her releasing an album of redemption and, ultimately, victory.<\/p>\n
In some ways, Carter missed the commercial brass ring in the early 1980\u2019s. Her two country-rock albums Two Sides To Every Woman <\/i>and Musical Shape <\/i>were released a decade too early; they would have fit in nicely with the modern Stronger <\/i>finds a mature Carlene Carter who, for the most part, has returned to her country roots. Carter\u2019s voice is still sound and her ability to interpret a song is alive and well. <\/p>\n It is the ballads that form the emotional center of this album: <\/i>\u201cSpider Lake,\u201d which features a high-end steel guitar as a counterpoint to Carter\u2019s vocals, is a song that puts the listener and hopefully Carter herself at ease; \u201cJudgement Day\u201d is a poignant ballad of love lost; the title cut is really a eulogy for Rosey and the beginning of the resurrection process for Carlene. <\/p>\n \u201cThe Bitter End\u201d is a traditional up-tempo country tune with steel guitar that provides a good counterpoint to the serious ballads, while \u201cWhy Be Blue\u201d features one of the better vocals on Stronger, <\/i>and \u201cTo Change Your Heart\u201d features an autoharp sound which would have made her grandmother Maybelle proud. <\/p>\n Carlene Carter does return to her \u201880s sound for two songs: \u201cBring Love\u201d is a joyful song of perseverance in the face of adversity with a smooth country-rock beat; the other, \u201cI\u2019m So Cool,\u201d was originally released in 1980 and here she gives it a rousing, rocking spin. <\/p>\n Stronger <\/i>may not explore new musical territory but it is an excellent and mature effort from a talented individual. Hopefully, it will be nowhere near twelve years before Carlene Carter records the next chapter of her life. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":29494,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8269],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-41073","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-carlene-carter","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41073"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}