Johnny Cash: "pocahontas"

I like my Johnny Cash with the Tennessee Three providing tunk-tukka-tunk rhythm, June on harmonies and a crowd full of criminals. As such, I always viewed his final spurt of American albums with Rick Rubin as more of a respectful archiving job than a must-own collection; I'm happy someone recorded his final days, but they just don't hold up next to his prison-riot peak. Maybe it was just that Cash, in all of his genre-spanning covers, hadn't yet wrung one of his final growls out on a track dear to my heart, with apologies to Soundgarden and Tom Petty. Oh, but now, as part of the release of the outtakes box set Unearthed, which Johnny helped assemble shortly before his death, comes an interpretation right in my wheelhouse, an underrated gem by master warbler Neil Young.

"Pocahontas" would seem a perfect platform for the grand old Cash, it being the pinnacle of Young's fetishization of the Wild West, right down to wanting to lay the indian princess as a surrogate for the American Dream or some such thing. Alas, then, that Rubin here abandons the stark trappings he most often dressed Cash in, turning instead to a distracting production that lends more to '66 Beatles. "Eleanor Rigby" strings and tooting Mellotron smack on psychedelic stickers inappropriate to both performer and song, which would've been just fine arranged, like most of the Man in Black's farewells, as a stately hymn. Or maybe not: the closing verses' weird spiral towards Marlon Brando and the Astrodome is also an uneasy fit for the Man in Black. Chalk it up to cowboys and Indians still not mixing, and look to Neil's wrenching live take on Year of the Horse for the gold standard. --Rob Mitchum

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