(American)
Johnny Cash covers Beck and Soundgarden? In your dreams, buddy. Backed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers? Yeah, right. And produced by Rick Rubin? Don't push your luck, pal.
Well, welcome to Unchained, my friend. This is not your father's Johnny Cash.
And yet it is. No matter how you package it, the man's voice is the focus, a worldly growl that makes any song it sings a Johnny Cash song, with all the grand history and limitations that come with it. It's not a wide-ranging voice, but it inhabits its own space, and stretches whatever song it sings to fit snugly around and inside itself. That makes Cash both a master interpreter and a resident of his own universe.
On this visit into Cash's realm, we find him turning Beck's "Rowboat" on its ear, making it a slow burner that feels the pain and heartbreak in the lyric, but looks hopefully to the future. Soundgarden's "Rusty Cage" is coiled tightly despite the opening's spare instrumentation. When the tension is released midway through the track, Cash spits out his words like a tiger pacing back and forth. The album's other contemporary rock cover is more obvious, Tom Petty's "Southern Accents," and it's given a slow reading that fits Cash to a tee.
Petty and his band are obviously relishing this session, an opportunity to play for, and with, one of the greats. Their performances are just right throughout, staying just subtle enough that they never steal the stage from the headliner, but still infused with just the right amount of passion. The whole album straddles the lines between country and rock, in the end just feeling like a rich slice of Americana.
The other songs on Unchained are a disparate lot, mostly covers, each neatly fitting a neat niche in Cash's persona, reflecting at times his spirituality ("Spiritual"), his history ("I've Been Everywhere"), his heritage ("I Never Picked Cotton") and the like. The album's two new originals are among its highlights. "Meet Me In Heaven" is written for his wife, the title taken from the words on his brother's tombstone. It's heartfelt and heartbreaking. "Country Boy" is a rocker that shows how grounded Cash remains, remembering the life he came from. Also worth mentioning here is one relic that has been resurrected here, "Mean Eyed Cat." One of the album's more upbeat tracks, it's a propulsive rocker he originally recorded in the Sun days; Cash says he recorded it before he'd finished it, and now that the final verse is written, he's done it again. It smokes.
Unchained has Cash's history in its favor, but this album is far from a piece of history. It's a beautiful blend of the classic and the timeless with the contemporary and the new, a potent reminder of how where we've been is a part of where we're going.
