Stronger

1	The Bitter End 3:20
2	Why Be Blue 2:54
3	To Change Your Heart 4:17
4	Bring Love 3:42
5	I'm So Cool 3:20
6	Spider Lace 3:37
7	On to You 3:06
8	Judgement Day 4:27
9	Break My Little Heart in Two 2:45
10	It Takes One to Know Me 3:14
11	Light of Your Love 2:55
12	Stronger 5:02

Barnes & Noble

A decade-plus has passed since we've heard an album's worth of material from Carlene Carter, during which interregnum she was making what Tom Waits has called "the wrong kind of headlines" in her personal life and enduring a true annus horribilis in 2003 with the deaths of three blood relatives (mother June Carter Cash, stepfather Johnny Cash, and sister Rosey) and her longtime companion (and producer), Howie Epstein. Musically she's been quiet most of that time, too, at least in the U.S., save for tribute performances here and there. Stronger is more than a pleasing return to form -- it's a knockout punch that references the past even as it moves Carter into a dynamic present tense. Credit for some of the musical muscle must go to producer (and Doobie Brother) John McFee, with whom Carter collaborated back in 1979 on her Two Sides to Every Story LP. Among the dozen tunes here is a searing, stomping remake of Carter's wry 1980 classic, "I'm So Cool" and, finally, her own rendition of "It Takes One to Know One." Heretofore heard only in Johnny Cash's recorded version, this beautiful, intimate country ballad penned by a 19-year-old Carter as a birthday present for her stepfather looks back on their relationship with palpable love, revelatory insight, and a smidgen of regret. But there is much healing going on in the new songs, in the tear-stained personal history chronicled in the rockabilly-tinged barn-burner "The Bitter End," in the buoyant, soaring country rock celebration of salvation through love in "Bring Love," and most dramatically in "Stronger," the hymn-like, string-enriched revelations of a "hell-raising angel" who survived it all and has emerged with new purpose. It's great to have her back. David McGee

All Music Guide

The last time most folks heard about Carlene Carter, the news wasn't good -- in 2001, she and then-boyfriend Howie Epstein, who had produced her best-selling album I Fell in Love during downtime from his gig as bassist with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, spent the night in jail in New Mexico after they were pulled over in a stolen truck with nearly three grams of heroin. Since Carter hadn't released an album since 1995 and had a reputation for drinking and rowdy behavior, it was easy for many fans to imagine the worst, and while Carter began pulling herself back to health, she returned to the stage in 2003 in a musical set in Nashville about the Carter Family (in which she played her own mother, June Carter), that would prove to be a devastating year for her, as her mother, her step-father Johnny Cash, her sister Rosey Carter, and her former beau Epstein all died within the space of a few months. After all this, the mere fact that Carlene Carter is healthy, happily married, and making music again seems surprising enough, so it's doubly impressive that 2008's Stronger is one of her best and most personal albums to date. Carter's voice is deeper and a shade less flexible on Stronger than on her previous recordings, but she sounds soulful and impassioned and can still bring her songs to vivid, compelling life in the studio, and with the help of John McFee, who produced the sessions and plays most of the instruments, she's made a disc that's as lively as her music of the '80s and '90s without sidestepping the emotional gravity that informs her new material. With the exception of the opening cut "The Bitter End," Carter wrote all the songs on Stronger by herself, and while not every tune refers to the drama that's come into her life since her last album, "Judgment Day," "It Takes One to Know Me," and the title cut are clearly informed by the good and the bad that's come her way in the past dozen years, and even upbeat songs like "Why Be Blue" and "Break My Little Heart in Two" are tougher and edgier that you'd expect (and the remake of "I'm So Cool" from Musical Shapes adds some depth missing from the original). If Carlene Carter's dark days have aged her, it's done her music good -- Stronger shows she still has spunk and fire to spare, while also revealing a hard-won maturity and strength that richly, truly earns her the over-used appellation of "survivor." Mark Deming