Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 03/07/06
Label: Mercury

With "The Man In Black" nearing death and the passing of June Carter Cash only months before, the fifth installment of Rick Rubin's American series begins, appropriately enough, with God. "Oh Lord, help me to walk just another mile, just one more mile, I'm tired of walking all alone…" sings Johnny, in that now familiar timbre between age and eternity. Still alive, but waiting for the end. Every nuance is accentuated, as if Rubin had inserted a microphone into Cash's mouth and deep into his soul. As if Cash, knowing the preciousness of the days, was hanging on every word.

As with any posthumous record, death lingers everywhere. Just look at the titles: "God's Gonna Cut You Down", "Further On Up The Road", "A Legend In My Time", "I'm Free From The Chain Gang Now". Even if they weren't about death, we'd be seeking it out. Occasionally the Grim Reaper materializes in the most bittersweet sense (the last song Cash ever wrote, "Like The 309", opens with gallows humour: "It should be a while before I see Dr Death, so it sure would be nice if I could get my breath..."). Sometimes he's closer to the bone. "On The Evening Train" concerns a man putting the corpse of his wife to rest.

The backing, courtesy of (Tom Petty's) Heartbreakers Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench, Beck sideman Smokey Hormel and former Zwan guitarist Matt Sweeney, is stately and respectful - always allowing His Master's Voice the room to breathe and say what he needs to say. As a consequence, judging these songs with any semblance of 'criticism' seems ridiculous. This is not a 'commercial' release, at least not in the commonly construed meaning of the word. If you had to be picky, you could say that nothing has the impact of that cover of Nine Inch Nail's "Hurt" or Nick Lowe's "The Beast In Me". But that's beside the point.

Instead, we're compensated with faithful renditions of Gordon Lightfoot's "If You Could Read My Mind" and Springsteen's "Further On Up The Road". The former locates a melody and sticks to it like a blood hound, the latter reduces The Boss's bombast to a plaintive country lament. Both are utterly heart wrenching, but probably minor works in comparison to the best of Cash's catalogue (that's to say the Sun Records stuff at the beginning, the albums at Folsom Prison and San Quentin in the middle, and Rubin-produced stuff at the end).

Anyway, for better or for worse, we're in mythic territory now. Cash's soul has already gone to Hollywood heaven via "Walk The Line". Joaquin Phoenix has chiseled his life story into stone tablets and like General Custer, Jesse James, JFK and MLK, "The Man In Black" has passed into legend. That's undoubtedly what he deserves, and certainly, these broadsides from his death bed are without sentimentality or mawkishness. That was always Cash's strength as a songwriter, and if "American V" is to be his last will and testament (and let's hope it is - nobody wants a Tupac of Country & Western) it marks the perfect spot for him to rest in peace.

    by Adam Webb