Rosanne Cash's 1993 album The Wheel came at a time of great personal and professional change for the celebrated singer and songwriter. Her marriage to Rodney Crowell, who was her closest musical collaborator as well as her husband, was in its death throes while she was recording 1990's Interiors, and after Columbia Records dropped the ball on promoting it, the newly single Cash left Nashville for New York City, where she wrote and recorded The Wheel. The recording also took place while she found herself falling in love with multi-instrumentalist John Leventhal, who co-produced the album with Cash. The Wheel is a remarkable set of songs that reconciles the pain of the past with the heady energy of starting a new life. While the record does indulge in a few of the tropes of the classic "breakup album" -- "Roses in the Fire" is an artfully bitter kiss-off to Crowell -- Cash seems more interested in the changes that fate has put in front of her as she revels in the adventure of her new surroundings in "Seventh Avenue," ponders the stakes of ending one relationship and beginning another on "Change Partners," and gives herself some much needed affirmation on "From the Ashes." Cash was never a cookie-cutter country artist, always a bit more literate and sophisticated than her peers without looking down on her audience, and with The Wheel, she essentially broke her ties with Nashville and its ways of doing things. The album is grown-up pop music that's beautifully crafted and rich with nuance, matching the emotions of Cash's lyrics and giving the melodies an uncluttered beauty that's as fearlessly honest as her past work, even as she explores new ways to tell her stories. While Cash was always a fine vocalist, The Wheel features some of the finest performances of her career, achingly affecting and expressive without stooping to histrionics. Rosanne Cash had been steadily evolving as an artist throughout the 1980s; on The Wheel she gave herself the space to become the artist she truly wanted to be, and it's a subtly dazzling experience. ~ Mark Deming