Johnny Cash - American 5: A Hundred Highways [Audio CD]

International products have separate terms, are sold from abroad and may differ from local products, including fit, age ratings, and language of product, labeling or instructions. Amazon.co.uk The ethical questions surrounding this final album in the American Recordings series are as unavoidable as they are, ultimately, peripheral. While the vocal tracks were recorded in the months just prior to Johnny Cash's passing in September 2003, the arrangements weren't undertaken until two years later. And though producer Rick Rubin had become a trusted friend, the Man in Black wasn't around to approve or disapprove, let alone guide, the final sessions. However, if the pure power of these recordings doesn't quiet the skeptics, nothing will. With Heartbreakers Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench and slide guitar session pro Smokey Hormel on board (all three of whom appear on earlier Cash albums), along with guitarists Matt Sweeney and Johnny Polansky, the sound is stately and acoustic, but rarely staid, even as the dynamics of earlier recordings in the series are absent. Instead, the songs have a measured, elegiac intensity, the sound of musicians choosing their notes carefully and making just the right choices. The songs Cash sings are, unsurprisingly, confessional and reflective: his mortality and his mistakes, his maker and his salvation, and the loss of his wife June and the end of his career may have weighed on his mind, but in these songs he both embodies and transcends his personal history. On "God's Gonna Cut You Down," as the musicians clap and stomp behind him, his voice cuts through the air like that same avenging hand. On the new original "Like the 309"--the last song Cash ever wrote--he cops to being short of breath, and that voice becomes a metaphor for what each of us will one day face. On Gordon Lightfoot's "If You Read My Mind," Rubin flirts with overwhelming the damp bittersweetness of Cash's phrasing in tasteful atmospherics, but the voice is implacable, hitting and finding notes one never expected he'd have the will to find. Likewise, it's hard to believe this is his first recording of Ian Tyson's "Four Strong Winds"; the elemental narrative seems to have been written for him. Two songs, however, Cash has recorded before: the born-again hymn "I Came to Believe" and the final spiritual, "I'm Free from the Chain Gang Now." The latter especially is a definitive testament, as is his version of Bruce Springsteen's "Further On (Up the Road)." "One sunny morning we'll rise, I know / And I'll meet you further on up the road," he sings. If only, John, if only. --Roy Kasten Review How many layers did Johnny Cash have? A lover, a fighter, a believer, and, through his American Recordings series, a man capable of weighing the good and bad of his own life and reconciling himself with it. As with the four before it, American V takes both original songs and cover versions in its stride. While none have quite the impact of the sensational "Hurt" on the last album, his versions of Gordon Lightfoot's "If You Could Read My Mind" and Hank Williams' "On The Evening Train"deliver a potentmix of power, passion and piety. He uses the covers to tell his own story. For example on "I'm Free From The Chain Gang Now" he sums up his past and his future beautifully; 'I got rid of the shackles that bound me, and the guards that were always around me'. It's on Cash's final composition though, "Like The 309", that the real drama and inevitability of his condition is revealed. As producer Rick Rubin points out in the album notes, some days Cash's voice would boom, while on others he would sound vulnerable. On "309"his mortality shines through.His voice barely stands up to several lines, yet the track is all the more uplifting for it. If it doesn't bring a smiling tear to your eye, you simply have no heart. American V would have been a fitting end to Cash's career even if he hadn't died three years ago. It