★★★★★
By his own admission, Johnny Cash was invisible in the 1980s. His albums were not selling, and he found himself on the outside looking in at the Nashville establishment. He still had name recognition and a devoted following, but was mostly considered a nostalgia act. A whole generation was at risk of never experiencing the original American badass.
Cash was skeptical when approached by producer Rick Rubin about making a new album...
- www.punknews.org
2014-08-13
★★★★★
Out Among the Stars is a newly unearthed Johnny Cash album, recorded in 1981 and 1984 but for some reason shelved at the time. Falling during Cash's slow middle period, the album was lost to time until being found by Cash's son, John Carter Cash, as he was cataloguing the family's archives. And it's a gem for fans who have missed the Man in Black's inimitable voice since his passing in 2003. Out Among the Stars is very much classic Cash. Storytelling. Balladry. Duets. A haunting spiritual...
- www.undertheradarmag.com
2014-04-11
★★★★★
Johnny Cash often seemed like he was granite in human form, so it's odd to think that such a giant once had his career derailed by John Travolta. The 1980 hit film Urban Cowboy accelerated country's long drift toward music that was soft, vacant and overproduced - driving Cash to dismiss the "Urban Cowboy fad" as "mechanical-bull manure." Smokey and the Bandit II came out that year, too, which didn't help...
- www.rollingstone.com
2014-04-05
★★★★★
Tweet Pretty Near Perfect Out Among the Stars represents a significant change in the relatively recent posthumous releases of the great Johnny Cash. Rather than continuing in the same vein of the American Recordings, which capitalized on the dramatics of Cash's aging voice and somber subject matter, Stars draws from lost sessions with producer Billy Sherrill that had been shelved by Columbia...
- www.mxdwn.com
2014-04-04
★★★★★
Mention Johnny Cash and most people either think of the young Sun Records singer whose early singles like "Folsom Prison Blues," "I Walk the Line" and "Ring of Fire" changed the sound of country music, or they'll remember him as he was near the end of his life, as a reinvented hipster who sang bare-bones versions of songs made popular by Soundgarden and Nine Inch Nails.
Until now, it's been difficult to reconcile the polarities...
- www.pastemagazine.com
2014-04-02
★★★★★
It's natural to be wary of posthumous releases. At a certain point, one has to wonder if we're being given record label chaff, material the artist had already decided wasn't wheat. There's a certain calculus involving our need for more from departed musicians and writers, the artists' own (presumed) ideas about their work, and the dictates of profit that often motivate vault-scraping releases from deceased creators. When does the whole exercise become unfair...
- www.thelineofbestfit.com
2014-03-28
★★★★★
Johnny Cash was a country music legend, but in the 80s he fell out of favour with his record label and they refused to release this intriguing "lost" album which was discovered in his archives. It was recorded while he was battling drug addiction, though his singing was sober, powerful and emotional...
- www.theguardian.com
2014-03-28
★★★★★
The quick-fix history of Cash'srecording career hasa tendency to suggest hiswork with producer RickRubin, which began in themid-90s, arrested a sharpdecline in quality. But whileit's true that some late-80sreleases were seriously belowpar, ultimately leading toColumbia letting him go,it would be a mistake todismiss his entire outputof the decade.
- recordcollectormag.com
2014-03-27
★★★★★
Writing about Johnny Cash is a lot like writing about religion: It's tough to know where to start, and most folks have their own unshakable ideas on the subject and little interest in your interpretation. At the heart of the matter lies a simple truth: it's difficult to cast a critical eye over something you've grown up, a presence you've always taken as gospel. So it must be said that not everything Johnny Cash recorded was hewn from pure gold...
- pitchfork.com
2014-03-27
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