Johnny Cash
Out Among the Stars
Ok - the good news is, there'sa new album of previously unreleased songs by Johnny Cash coming out. The bad news is, the songs are from the eighties, that sad time in between cool, rebellious, young Johnny Cash and deep, soulful old Johnny Cash. So, mixed expectations coming into this.
It starts out well - the title track is a well-written story song that points the way towards the Cash of the American albums, pretty much universally regarded as his greatest work. It's not quite up to their standard, but it's still a decent opener. Things go downhill with the next track, a run-of-the-mill duet between Cash and June Carter, and they don;t get much better with "She Used to Love Me A Lot". This song sounds as if Cash was reaching for the profundity that he had acheived before, and would acheive again, but what comes out is just a rather boring love song. The next two tracks aren't really worth commenting on - they could be by more or less anyone, and I probably won;t remember them in five minutes' time. "If I Told You Who It Was" is awful, just cringe-inducingly awful. "Call Your Mother" is actually a pretty good song, but the saccharine Nashville production robs it of any real power. The same cannot be said for the rest of the tracks on this album. Ultimately, there's no reason to buy this unless you absolutely MUST own everythiong Cash ever released.
Rating: 2/10
And now I'm going to go listen to American V.
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