Best thing about the new Johnny Cash album? It sounds like a Johnny Cash album. I’m a big fan of the work Cash did with Rick Rubin, but it felt like a new chapter in his career. Those recordings spoke to Cash facing his mortality. He was reflecting on his life, with his voice warbled and frail. The impact was impossible to deny, but it was a very different Cash from the baritone outlaw swagger of his early recordings.
Out Among The Stars captures an interesting time in Cash’s life. He was still the Man In Black, but his star was beginning to dim. The eighties found people turning towards country that embraced a more pop sensibility than what Cash was known for. These songs were recorded and shelved, lost for years among Cash’s extensive library. When his son John Carter Cash unearthed them, fans could feel a certain tension. Would this be a lost treasure, or another random collection of songs slapped together to shill a posthumous album? While most of the tunes on Out Among The Stars are covers, this is very much a Johnny Cash album. A record that fits nicely between his early recordings and his later work with Rubin.
Cash is more at ease here, which helps the album succeed. Instead of the man in black bucking the system, Out Among The Stars finds and older, more mature outlaw who has accepted his fate on the outskirts of normal life. “Tennessee” is a braggarts story about the town he loves, “After All” is a quiet reflection on life and lost love, while “If I Told You Who It Was” is the devilishly charming Cash talking about a one night rendezvous with a famous female country artist. (Those versed in country music might be able to guess based on a particular refrain).
While there are no bad tracks on this album, two songs stand out. “She Used To Love Me A Lot” is a heartbreaker, one of those stories of lost love that Cash is so good at making us feel, not just hear. The song depicts two former lovers and their chance meeting. One is desperate to rekindle, the other has long since moved on. The pain of that rejection is universal, and Cash makes us feel every crack of the heart.
The title track frames Cash’s unique ability to represent all sides of a tragedy. “Out Among The Stars” tells the story of a small-town kid who barricades himself inside a Texas liquor store after a botched robbery. Cash manages to show the desperation of the young man, the disdain of his drunken father, and the indifference of a town over the death of a “criminal”. The song is as much about second chances as it is the story of a young man down-on-his-luck. Cash never judges, he never moralizes, he just tells the story and allows us to read into it.
Out Among The Stars not only gives us a glimpse of a forgotten era in Johnny Cash’s career, it also serves a glimpse into his future work with Rick Rubin. It’s a frozen moment between Cash as the slick country crooner, and the older, wiser, songwriter. Standing on the cover of Out Among The Stars, Cash is thicker, with a world-weary grimace on a face etched by battles both personal and professional.
Why this album was shelved is anyone’s guess. The fact that we can enjoy it now is a parting gift from an icon that has given us more than we ever deserved.
