Johnny Cash: American V: A Hundred Highways
CML call number: CD/COUNTRY/Cash
Jon Pareles wrote in the New York Times: "'American V: A Hundred Highways' … draws on the last sessions Cash recorded. He worked intermittently from 2002; through the death of his wife, June, in May 2003; until shortly before his own death on Sept. 12, 2003. … The bitterness that surfaced on 'American IV: The Man Comes Around' … has been replaced … by resignation and a sense of release. The album begins with a prayer, Larry Gatlin's 'Help Me,' and ends with 'I'm Free from the Chain Gang Now,' free presumably after death. At first Cash had intended to make a gospel album, but 'American V' mixes the reverent and the secular. There are love songs that also grieve, and there are songs about moving on, whether from a romance or an earthly existence. He makes a quiet masterpiece out of Bruce Springsteen's 'Further On (Up the Road),' turning it into a portent of resurrection. … The music isn't afraid to call for tears, but it does so through understatement. Cash's voice is always exposed, whether it's full-toned or faltering, and most of the tracks are folky and reverent, placing measured finger-picking above churchy chords."
Jon Pareles wrote in the New York Times: "'American V: A Hundred Highways' … draws on the last sessions Cash recorded. He worked intermittently from 2002; through the death of his wife, June, in May 2003; until shortly before his own death on Sept. 12, 2003. … The bitterness that surfaced on 'American IV: The Man Comes Around' … has been replaced … by resignation and a sense of release. The album begins with a prayer, Larry Gatlin's 'Help Me,' and ends with 'I'm Free from the Chain Gang Now,' free presumably after death. At first Cash had intended to make a gospel album, but 'American V' mixes the reverent and the secular. There are love songs that also grieve, and there are songs about moving on, whether from a romance or an earthly existence. He makes a quiet masterpiece out of Bruce Springsteen's 'Further On (Up the Road),' turning it into a portent of resurrection. … The music isn't afraid to call for tears, but it does so through understatement. Cash's voice is always exposed, whether it's full-toned or faltering, and most of the tracks are folky and reverent, placing measured finger-picking above churchy chords."
posted by casemusic at 10:34 AM
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