Johnny Cash Out Among the Stars Legacy B-
These 12 songs, recorded by Johnny Cash in 1981 and 1984 with Tammy Wynette’s producer, Billy Sherrill, and shelved by Columbia, were found in 2012 by Cash’s son, John Carter Cash. He polished the sessions for this release and, since the songs were mostly unfinished, brought in guitarists Marty Stuart and Buddy Miller, dobro king Jerry Douglas, fiddler Laura Cash and others to play.
While it’s always a pleasure to savor the intensity of Cash’s vocals, Sherrill’s production would have sounded dated in the ’80s. But there are songs worth hearing.
“Baby Ride Easy” is one of two duets with June Carter Cash; a teaming of Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings on Hank Snow’s “I’m Movin’ On” is a standout. There are two versions of the noirish “She Used to Love Me a Lot,” one produced by Elvis Costello.
We get a glimpse of Cash’s next decade in “I Drove Her Out of Her Mind.” The song, about a man’s Thelma and Louise-like fantasy to buy a new car so he can drive himself and his ex off a cliff, has the gallows charm that would become manifest in the 1990s when Cash teamed with producer Rick Rubin on the American Recordings albums.
Cash is deeply moving on his gospel original “I Came to Believe,” which draws on his experience of a 12-step program.
Hot tracks: “I Drove Her Out of Her Mind,” “I’m Movin’ On,” “I Came to Believe.” - ELLIS WIDNER
The Hold Steady Teeth Dreams Washington Square B+
The Hold Steady has been around for 10 years, so the furious, spoken-sung anthems of early albums like Almost Killed Me and Separation Sunday are long in the rear view mirror.
No worries, though, because the Brooklyn-via-Minneapolis indie rock heroes still have plenty of rockin’ to do on the band’s strongest outing since 2008’s Stay Positive.
Singer/songwriter/bespectacled flailer Craig Finn still is keen for songs about users, dealers, old hard-core punk gangs, Catholics, resurrection, redemption and girls who are having a rough go of it. And while Finn, with his science teacher appearance, inside references, frequent revisiting of not only themes but lyrical phrases and strungout characters, can be an acquired taste for some (we’ve been fans since the first time we heard him sing about that little hoodrat, but you already knew that), he’s an undeniably fascinating songwriter, as interested in story and characters and the way words sound up against each other as melody.
His talents are never more on display than they are with his Hold Steady mates - co-founder Tad Kubler, Bobby Drake, Galen Polivka and ex-Lucero member Steve Selvidge - who are as tight as ever on these fist-pumping, classic rocktinged anthems.
The twin guitar attack of Selvidge and Kubler has jelled nicely and the group seems to have finally adapted to the loss a few years back of keyboardist Franz Nicolay. Teeth Dreams isn’t The Hold Steady’s best, but it is a reminder of how good this band is.
Hot tracks: “Spinners,” “The Ambassador,” “Big Cig” “Oaks.” - SEAN CLANCY
Leon Russell Life Journey Blue Note B+
The first notes from the piano on the opening tune, “Come on in My Kitchen,” rumble like vintage Joe Cocker/Mad Dogs and Englishmen-era Leon Russell. The song, which he also performed with Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett, is a Robert Johnson blues classic.
The craggy-voiced Russell got a boost from The Union, a collaboration with Elton John, in 2010; John is executive producer of Life Journey.
This mix of standards, blues and rock, which echoes a Willie Nelson eclecticism, includes a swinging, big band-styled “Georgia on My Mind,” a jazzy “I Got It Bad (and That Ain’t Good)” and a wondrous “The Masquerade Is Over” (with a hint of his “This Masquerade”).
The renowned singer/ songwriter (“This Masquerade,” “A Song for You,” “Superstar”) sings with heart on these dozen tunes, including two originals: the rollicking “Big Lips” and a New Orleans-spiced “Down in Dixieland.”
In stores and online outlets today.
Hot tracks: “Come on in My Kitchen,” “I Got It Bad,” “Big Lips.” - ELLIS WIDNER
The Notwist Close to the Glass Sub Pop B-
Magnetic pulses and beats, krautrock, ’90s indie-pop homages, arena rock, acoustic folk, Beefheartian psychedelia … it’s all here on the latest from German outfit The Notwist and, somehow, if you’re down for a noisy trip into the weird, the whole thing sort of works in a neck-snapping, what-the-heck-was-that kind of way.
From the strange beeps and bleats of “Signals” to the My Bloody Valentine meets Pavement “7-Hour Drive,” The Notwist is not in the least bit interested in the linear, instead exploring whatever strange and offbeat groove strikes its fancy, even if that means derailing a perfectly good riff or melody and driving it into some freaky tunnel of eccentricity.
Which is just fine, since the world is loaded with perfectly good riffs and melodies that probably need to be taken down a more interesting path.
Hot tracks: “Kong,” “Into Another Tune,” “7-Hour Drive.” - SEAN CLANCY
Style, Pages 29 on 04/01/2014