More than six years after his death, the last posthumous release from Johnny Cash is set to arrive, featuring various covers and an original that’s among the final songs the Man In Black ever wrote. American VI: Ain’t No Grave, the finishing installment in a series of recordings overseen by producer Rick Rubin, will be released on February 26, what would’ve been Cash’s 78th birthday.
Supervisor and American series producer Rick Rubin knew that time was short for old man Cash, and he set to work pulling every last musical drop that the music legend was willing to provide in his final months of life. Their collaborations, which resulted in dozens of songs recorded between the completion of American IV: The Man Comes Around in 2002 and Cash’s death on September 12, 2003, earned six Grammys and spawned a new generation of fans.
Cash had a feeling that American IV might be his last release, so at Rubin’s urging he immediately began writing and recording new material. He was near the end of his life, however, and special arrangements had to be made for an engineer and guitar players to always be on call. “Every morning, when he’d wake up, he would call the engineer and tell him if he was physically up to working that day,” Rubin explained. “Johnny said that recording was his main reason for being alive. I think it was the only thing that kept him going.” It's from these sessions that the material included on American VI was spawned.
This second posthumous collection of studio material isn't essential if you're not a true-blue fanatic, but that takes nothing away from the haunting, eleventh-hour defiance of opener "Aint No Grave (Gonna Hold My Body Down)" or the total hijacking and redefinition of other people's tunes, such as Bob Nolan's "Cool Water" or his dreamy take on Ed McCurdy's anti-war song "Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream". After all, it was his cover of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt" that served as both a platinum landmark and, after a strong revitalization, a mainstream final farewell from the man.
Nevertheless, it would be naïve to expect that American VI would be anything other than bare leftovers and lesser-thans. There's no escaping that At Folsom Prison remains the referential album among casual fans, and everything since is weighed against its classic spitfire energy and raw fuck-the-world attitude. But really, that's an impossible standard to hold this collection to. Cash’s creative energy had noticeably waned by this time, and his covers of Sheryl Crow’s "Redemption Day" and Kris Kristofferson’s "For The Good Times" are formulaic at best. All the same, his take on Hank Snow's "I Don't Hurt Anymore" is a stirring, quiet triumph.
Understandably angling for spiritual and existential themes in the selections, Cash also covered Tom Paxton’s "Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound" and Queen Lili’uokalani’s "Aloha Oe," as well as his own song, "First Corinthians". The track was written over the span of his last three years and is a tender yet clear ballad confirming faith in God, faith in his love waiting for him in the afterlife. If there were ever a fitting goodbye from Cash to the world, a chin-up send-off after a lifetime bigger than life itself, it's this one.
American VI features guitarist Mike Campbell and keyboardist Benmont Tench (both of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers), who played on all of the series’ albums except the first. They were joined in the studio by guitarists Matt Sweeney and Jonny Polonsky, as well as Smokey Hormel, who also played on American IV and V. The Avett Brothers also make an appearance on Ain’t No Grave.
Skwerl from Antiquiet issued the best final verdict on American VI I've seen: "Though it plucks the heartstrings to listen to the man’s final stretch, it would have done more justice to his genius to present them in a greater context, perhaps as part of the Unearthed box set, rather than as a 10 track, 32 minute last gasp."
Couldn't agree more.
CraveOnline's Rating: 7 out of 10
