POP MUSIC REVIEW : Cash, Crowell: Two Stars Pass in Lyrical Night of Lost Love

When a couple divorces, friends are often forced to choose sides. Whose version do you buy? Who suffered more and who is the villain?

While being a fan shouldn’t be confused with being a friend, that can be a hard distinction to make in country music, where artists so often wear their hearts on their sleeves.

There has scarcely been a more creative or emotionally revealing couple in country music than Rosanne Cash and Rodney Crowell, and the breakup a few years ago of their 12-year marriage has yielded a bumper crop of songs about dissolution and rebirth. Thanks to a booking coincidence, both sides were aired about 25 miles apart in Orange County on Monday.

At the Crazy Horse in Santa Ana, Crowell was backed by a new five-piece band in a wide-ranging, 15-song set. He may be one of the most healthily subversive forces in country music, writing songs so catchy they’re accepted by radio while containing an artistic depth that’s usually foreign to the airwaves.

Crowell sidestepped some of the stronger songs from the current “Let the Picture Paint Itself” album, but did perform the title tune, with its message of accepting life as it comes, and the renewed hopes invested in “Loving You Makes Me Strong.” The moments where time stood still, though, were his ballads “After All This Time” and “Many a Long and Lonesome Highway,” where lyrical reflection was joined with a soaring, aching delivery reminiscent of Roy Orbison.

As deep as Crowell goes, Cash’s quietly stunning show at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano made him seem merely a glib tunesmith by comparison. With her last couple of albums, she evidently has given up on mainstream country acceptance, instead forging an intensely personal sound of her own. Her songs from last year’s “The Wheel” and 1990’s “Interiors” seemed all the more personal Monday in a primarily acoustic setting, where her three band members moved freely from cello to bongos.

Even the Broadway show tune “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” was transformed into a moment of introspective grace, and her own songs, particularly 1987’s “The Real Me” and the more recent “The Truth About You,” “What We Really Want” and the new “The Western Wall,” went about as soulful and deep as songs get.

Neither singer made any mention of the ex’s proximity. The closest they came was when someone at Cash’s show called out a request for Crowell’s “I Don’t Have to Crawl.” Responded Cash, “I don’t either, man.”