American III: Solitary Man

All in all, as resonant and dignified a covers album as you'll ever hear.

Greying at the edges, its tremor more pronounced, his voice is sober, honest, defiant. And it turns rock songs into something that sounds as old as the hills.

If one wanted to quibble, one could say that the Cash-Rubin collaboration is starting to feel just a little formulaic.... yet Cash continually surprises with his ability to completely inhabit material by writers much younger than him.

While some critics take issue with Rubin's underproduction, none of the songs on American III require ornate instrumentation. Whether they've been fluffed up or stripped raw, at the core of each is a compelling statement from one of our greatest humanists.

When a tune falls into the jurisdiction of the venerable country-folk troubadour, the accumulated details of any previous readings or associations are stripped away, and its core brilliantly revealed.

The results on "Solitary Man" are mixed, leaning at times to inadvertent novelty.

Like his two previous studio albums, Solitary Man is sparsely produced by Rick Rubin, and continues the themes of love, faith, and loneliness that their previous collaborations have chillingly embraced.

The onus here lies on the production... Rick Rubin's work is too timid; mostly, the shy combos of guitar, fiddle and accordion, or Benmont Tench's subliminal contributions on keyboards, make up the kind of severe meal that one is forced to think of as "tasteful."

Though the Man in Black has rarely sounded blacker, producer Rick Rubin frames that deep sea voice with harmonies and churchly organs, making for a dark angel beauty of an album that's austere but welcoming.

"Solitary Man" may lack the immediate impact of its predecessors but is no less a masterpiece.

Though the covers on American III will attract the majority of listener attention, Cash’s own material steals the show.

I'm assuming the problems began when Rubin presented Cash with a cache of songs to choose from. From there, Rubin's production only makes a bad situation worse, putting Cash's dusty, reverbless voice -- which is beginning to show its frailties -- unnaturally in your face.... But if you can wade through the chaff, it's Cash's originals that save the disc.

Like Neil Young's Silver And Gold, it feels like a thematically empty, knockabout place-holder. American Recordings, one of Cash's towering classics, was all devotion and doubt, a brilliant, raw-boned meditation on redemption and death. A loose, flat set of odds and ends, Solitary Man is merely a minor but endearing record from a man who seems to know he's given more than enough.