MrsSpringsteen
Blue Crack Addict
It's out today, I can't wait to get it
You can listen here
http://main.losthighwayrecords.com/product.aspx?ob=disc&src=art&pid=1698
There's another CD out today of previously unreleased songs, Personal File
Review of American V
By James Reed, Boston Globe Staff | July 4, 2006
There's a poster of Johnny Cash just above the stereo in my bedroom. It's a photo of Cash in 1966, the one where he's in a suit backstage at London's then Hammersmith Odeon, with a cigarette dangling from his lips and dark circles and deep bags cradling his sunken eyes. The picture was taken at the height of Cash's drug and alcohol problems, and his skeletal left hand, with veins popping, is shocking since Cash was only in his 30s.
Every time I listen to Cash's latest album, ``American V: A Hundred Highways ," out today on Lost Highway/American, I can't get that image out of my head. It's as if the man from 1966, still downcast and ravaged by addiction, had made this album 40 years later. Only this time, Cash is fully aware of (and even embracing) his imminent death, dejected by his deteriorating health and the loss of his lifelong love, June Carter Cash, who died just four months before he did in 2003.
It's fitting that this is one of the final album s in his celebrated ``American Recordings" series with producer Rick Rubin. After four previous albums recorded over a decade, there's really nowhere else to go after these songs. Taken together, they're as poignant a farewell and tribute as you could imagine to a man (in black, of course) with such a storied past and imposing legacy.
Much of ``American V" is devastating, particularly given the context of Cash's personal life at the time of recording, in the last two years of his life. As callous as it sounds, these spare, acoustic songs probably wouldn't be so moving if Cash were still alive; they would be eerily foreboding. You can hear death in the songs like an invisible instrument.
The album's title alludes to travel, and the song order pointedly bookends his spiritual journey, beginning with his opening utterance of ``Oh, Lord/ Help me to walk/ Another mile, just one more mile/ I'm tired of walking all alone" (on Larry Gatlin's ``Help Me"). Eleven songs later, Cash sings the liberating ``I'm Free From the Chain Gang Now" as a perfect coda for the album, but also for his life.
But he's not above lightening the mood occasionally. On the guitar-blues train song ``Like the 309," one of the last songs Cash wrote, he pokes fun at his waning health: ``It should be a while/ Before I see Dr. Death/ So it would sure be nice/ If I could get my breath."
To the very end, Cash was a God-fearing man, both in life and especially on record. Over the lilt of an acoustic guitar, he imbues ``I Came to Believe" (``in a power much higher than I") with a soaring testimonial spirit, blurring the line between secular and sacred.
Though there's nothing quite as galvanizing as Cash's rendition of Trent Reznor's ``Hurt" on ``American IV: The Man Comes Around," Cash continues to mine gold from seemingly unlikely material. Gordon Lightfoot's ``If You Could Read My Mind" becomes a reflective ode to Cash's mortality. On Bruce Springsteen's ``Further on (Up the Road)," he raises the hair on your neck with lines such as ``got on my dead man's suit and my smilin' skull ring."
Compared with the new ``Personal File," a two-disc collection of previously unreleased songs, ``American V" suggests a glimmer of how mighty Cash once was. The accompaniment is always tasteful, with nothing getting in the way of Cash delivering every line with utmost, if wobbly, conviction. His voice -- once a bottomless baritone that commanded your attention simply by intoning, ``Hello, I'm Johnny Cash" -- had been diminished for a while. In its place came a feeble plea that seemed to beg more for redemption rather than to assert the fiery defiance of Cash's early work.
It's a small miracle this album is neither maudlin nor morbid. If anything, Cash sounds like he has found peace, having accepted his fate and asking the listener to do the same. For that, ``American V" is a gem : a respectful swan song that holds its creator in loving remembrance.
You can listen here
http://main.losthighwayrecords.com/product.aspx?ob=disc&src=art&pid=1698
There's another CD out today of previously unreleased songs, Personal File
Review of American V
By James Reed, Boston Globe Staff | July 4, 2006
There's a poster of Johnny Cash just above the stereo in my bedroom. It's a photo of Cash in 1966, the one where he's in a suit backstage at London's then Hammersmith Odeon, with a cigarette dangling from his lips and dark circles and deep bags cradling his sunken eyes. The picture was taken at the height of Cash's drug and alcohol problems, and his skeletal left hand, with veins popping, is shocking since Cash was only in his 30s.
Every time I listen to Cash's latest album, ``American V: A Hundred Highways ," out today on Lost Highway/American, I can't get that image out of my head. It's as if the man from 1966, still downcast and ravaged by addiction, had made this album 40 years later. Only this time, Cash is fully aware of (and even embracing) his imminent death, dejected by his deteriorating health and the loss of his lifelong love, June Carter Cash, who died just four months before he did in 2003.
It's fitting that this is one of the final album s in his celebrated ``American Recordings" series with producer Rick Rubin. After four previous albums recorded over a decade, there's really nowhere else to go after these songs. Taken together, they're as poignant a farewell and tribute as you could imagine to a man (in black, of course) with such a storied past and imposing legacy.
Much of ``American V" is devastating, particularly given the context of Cash's personal life at the time of recording, in the last two years of his life. As callous as it sounds, these spare, acoustic songs probably wouldn't be so moving if Cash were still alive; they would be eerily foreboding. You can hear death in the songs like an invisible instrument.
The album's title alludes to travel, and the song order pointedly bookends his spiritual journey, beginning with his opening utterance of ``Oh, Lord/ Help me to walk/ Another mile, just one more mile/ I'm tired of walking all alone" (on Larry Gatlin's ``Help Me"). Eleven songs later, Cash sings the liberating ``I'm Free From the Chain Gang Now" as a perfect coda for the album, but also for his life.
But he's not above lightening the mood occasionally. On the guitar-blues train song ``Like the 309," one of the last songs Cash wrote, he pokes fun at his waning health: ``It should be a while/ Before I see Dr. Death/ So it would sure be nice/ If I could get my breath."
To the very end, Cash was a God-fearing man, both in life and especially on record. Over the lilt of an acoustic guitar, he imbues ``I Came to Believe" (``in a power much higher than I") with a soaring testimonial spirit, blurring the line between secular and sacred.
Though there's nothing quite as galvanizing as Cash's rendition of Trent Reznor's ``Hurt" on ``American IV: The Man Comes Around," Cash continues to mine gold from seemingly unlikely material. Gordon Lightfoot's ``If You Could Read My Mind" becomes a reflective ode to Cash's mortality. On Bruce Springsteen's ``Further on (Up the Road)," he raises the hair on your neck with lines such as ``got on my dead man's suit and my smilin' skull ring."
Compared with the new ``Personal File," a two-disc collection of previously unreleased songs, ``American V" suggests a glimmer of how mighty Cash once was. The accompaniment is always tasteful, with nothing getting in the way of Cash delivering every line with utmost, if wobbly, conviction. His voice -- once a bottomless baritone that commanded your attention simply by intoning, ``Hello, I'm Johnny Cash" -- had been diminished for a while. In its place came a feeble plea that seemed to beg more for redemption rather than to assert the fiery defiance of Cash's early work.
It's a small miracle this album is neither maudlin nor morbid. If anything, Cash sounds like he has found peace, having accepted his fate and asking the listener to do the same. For that, ``American V" is a gem : a respectful swan song that holds its creator in loving remembrance.
