Until We Meet Again

I am not a big fan of posthumous albums. They almost never work because it is missing what every album needs, the artist vision. This is the main reason why I am most likely going to pass on the upcoming Jimi Hendrix release next week. But the thing about the two albums the followed the death of Johnny Cash is they may be more a Rick Rubin album as much as Cash who has been in bad health threw much of the recording adding only his voice, and three songs of which wrote to the final two album.

Released last week on what would have been seventy-eighth birthday, American VI: Ain’t No Grave is a fitting end to the career of the Man in Black and doesn’t stray at all from the previous American Recording. Cash and Rubin pick songs that manage to sum up Cash’s life of where he has been and where he was going. But unlike the previous albums where the duo choose some songs aimed at reaching a younger demographic with songs like Nine Inch Nails Hurt or Personal Jesus from Depeche Mode, the most recent cover is Redemption Day from Sheryl Crow’s 1996 album, the next dates back to 1970.

The highlights bookend of the album. Ain’t No Grave (Gonna Hold This Body Down), featuring The Avett Brothers on banjo, footsteps and chains, almost matches God’s Gonna Cut You Down from the last album in its chilling effect on the ear. On the other end of the spectrum Aloha Oe, which dates all the way back to 1977, plays as a heavenly tune, with a ukulele taking the place of a harp, where you can see Cash finally in a well deserved white suit and you can’t help to believe when he delivered the line, “until we meet again.”

Song to Download - Ain’t No Grave (Gonna Hold This Body Down)

American VI: Ain’t No Grave gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.