Herald review: * * * *
(American/Universal)
Review: Graham Reid
After this year's Love/Murder/God collection - a three-CD, thematically compiled career retrospective which had the feel of a tombstone and valediction - this third outing in the Rick Rubin-produced American Recordings series is welcome.
Cash, who has been in constant ill-health and has Parkinson's disease, now says he's well again. So he isn't cashing in his chips just yet, it seems - although here he opens proceedings with a cover of Tom Petty's I Won't Back Down ("You can stand me up at the gates of Hell, but I won't back down") and goes out on an appropriately chin-up delivery of the old Wayfaring Stranger ("There is no sickness, no toil or danger in that bright land to which I go").
As with the previous American albums, Cash and Rubin pick excellent and appropriate contemporary material suited to Cash's dark, gravel-pouring vocals (U2's One, Nick Cave's Mercy Seat, Will Oldham's awe-inspiring I See A Darkness among them), some classic country material (David Allen Coe's Would You Lay With Me), some originals, the Neil Diamond title track and his moving treatment of That Lucky Old Sun.
With Petty and most Heartbreakers, vocals from Sheryl Crow and Merle Haggard, and Marty Stuart on guitar, this again proves there is only one Johnny Cash. He still deserves, and can command, your best attention.
<i>Johnny Cash:</i> American III: Solitary Man
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