eShop USA > Music > American V: A Hundred Highways
American V: A Hundred Highways
List Price: $13.98Our Price: $9.97 You Save: $4.01 (29%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0602498626962
Label: Lost Highway
Manufacturer: Lost Highway
MPN: 000276902
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: Lost Highway
Release Date: July 04, 2006
Studio: Lost Highway
Related Items: Featured Listmania!
Editorial Review:
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
More Cash
At Folsom Prison | 
American Recordings | 
At San Quentin | 
American IV: The Man Comes Around | 
The Legend | 
The Complete Sun Recordings 1955-1958 |
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Songs of my heart . . . .
I'm not going to pretend to be musically astute and theoretically compare how this album may have sounded if the Great JRC himself had been around to approve/disapprove the use of cellos in "Help Me."
I'm going to tell you that when I thought "The Man Comes Around" would always be my favorite Cash album, it's only because this one hadn't been made yet. Each and every cut touches my heart . . . comforts me, delights me, gives me courage. (Yeah, even "Like the 309")
So, ... Read More
Rating: - Johnny Cash
CD arrived in excellent condition. If you buy this, be prepared to hear a Johnny Cash we never knew. I could feel the heartache of deceased spouse.
Rating: - Perfection from the foreboding "Man In Black"
I,m trying to come up with some eloquent,and expressive words to describe my personal feelings,after listening to this "masterpiece", but I simply can't come up with the words. Only to say that the Legend saved the best for last.
Rating: - So emotionally powerful it's makes you feel like he's standing right next to you.
I have been a casual Johnny Cash fan for about 5 years. So I can assure you as a casual fan that this CD had to earn all five stars out of me. I wish I could have given it 10. What struck me the most was the passion in Johnny's frail, course, yet emotionally pleasing voice. You feel like your right there in the room with him. After listening to this CD you feel like your saying goodbye to an old friend. The CD feels like a right of passage for Johnny. Most of the songs are covers, but he makes them ... Read More
Rating:  - Grand Finale
With a somber voice, Cash gently sings his final studio recordings with a subtle release, however it is not the sound that will take you down in spirit so much as the songs themselves. They are like tomes, farewell notes and final goodbyes that touch on different subjects that all seem to point to the same outcome; that this is the end. It is not my favorite of the American Recordings but the fact that it is the last, with a song list that denotes such finality, it is sometimes more than haunting. Goodbye ... Read More
Related Categories:
| |
 |
