Just when you think the last long black train has left the station, another two come along at once.
Johnny Cash began recording the fifth instalment in the American plan immediately after the completion of The Man Comes Around in November 2002. His wife June Carter died in May the following year, and consequently the sessions became the singer's sole focus and raison d'etre until he passed away four months later.
In the wake of Cash’s death, Rick Rubin, an unlikely but ideal custodian of his client and friend’s latter-day legacy, elected to allow the stream of eulogies, tributes, bio-pics and biographies thin out a little before sanctioning the release of American V, that the songs might get a sober hearing.
Whether through opportunism or synchronicity, Sony/BMG have seen fit to also schedule the release of Personal File this month, an expansive 49-song collection gleaned from Cash’s own archives, mostly originating from solo sessions that took place in the mid-70s. These recordings are notable not just because they provided the template for Rubin’s spartan recording methodology, but also ample proof of how Cash’s voice can imbue everything from Elizabethan-derived Appalachian ballads to old chestnuts like ‘Galway Bay’ – tunes that in lesser hands would come off as mawkish – with undeniable gravitas and heaviosity.
American V on the other hand, is a whole other story; a summation of the themes arrayed in the three-CD compilation series God, Love and Murder released seven years ago. The sound of the record is, as we’ve come to expect, bare and unflinching. Cash’s voice is right in your ear and has rarely sounded more freighted with authority, or vested with the lucid urgency of a man being stalked by his own shadow.
The musical embellishment is minimal, although Rubin’s house band, including Heartbreakers Benmont Tench on organ and Mike Campbell on guitar, plus Smokey Hormel and Matt Sweeney, flesh out the songs with taste and restraint.
The tunes pendulum swing between sawn-off fixin’-to-die rags, fiery gospel warnings and achingly tender love songs. In the latter category, you can’t hear Cash’s masterful reading of Hank Williams’ tearjerker ‘On The Evening Train’ without thinking of June (“I heard the laughter at the depot/But my tears fell like the rain/When I saw them place that long white casket/In the baggage coach of the evening train”), while a version of Gordon Lightfoot’s metaphysical love song ‘If You Could Read My Mind’ sets an an almost psychedelic lyric to a melody the equal of ‘Wichita Lineman’ or ‘Some Velvet Morning’.
But the jewel is Cash’s own ‘Like The 309’, the last in a long line of train songs that began with ‘Hey Porter’ and ‘Folsom Prison Blues’, ran right through the twin-track 60s concept albums, and hit a late peak with the revelatory ghost locomotive of ‘The Man Comes Around’. Except this train isn’t a vehicle for wanderlust or a means of drifter’s escape, but a graveyard vessel bound for the ultimate terminus est (“It should be a while before I see Doctor Death/So it would sure be nice if I could get my breath/Well I’m not the cryin’ nor the whinin’ kind/Til I hear the whistle of the 309… Put me in my box on the 309”).
The record is near perfect in its execution. Cash’s health may have been failing, but there’s nothing feeble or half-cocked about a song like ‘Further On (Up The Road)’ or the spiritual standard ‘God’s Gonna Cut You Down’, which conjures images of Sister Rosetta Tharpe doing ‘This Train’ revisited as a chain-gang worksong anchored by a floor-tom/handclap rhythm and layered with evil bottleneck (“Go tell that long-tongued liar/Go and tell that midnight rider/Tell the rambler, the gambler, the backbiter/Tell ’em that God’s gonna cut ’em down”), while the closing ‘I’m Free From The Chain Gang Now’ is a careworn ex-con’s cry of deliverance.
A Hundred Highways is a defiant but dignified conclusion to the American saga. In the words of ee cummings, how do you like your blue-eyed boy now, Mister Death?
Rating: Personal File – 7/10, American V: A Hundred Highways – 8.5/10