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*** Johnny Cash

AMERICAN III

(American)

“I’m on Fire,” one of three non-Nebraska tracks on Sub Pop’s multi-artist tribute to the stripped-down 1982 album that was Springsteen’s redemption from the crass commercial sins of The River, doesn’t need Johnny Cash’s seal of approval. But with his desiccated voice dwarfing the soft swell of mournful organ tones and the stark strum and twang of a pair of guitars, the ailing Man in Black quietly confers upon it a timeless dignity. Although Nebraska is little more than a footnote in the tale of Bruce Springsteen: International Superstar, it looms larger than any of the Boss’s other releases among alternative country-clubbers and Americana devotees — it’s the one Springsteen classic that calls out to be covered reverently. So it’s no surprise that rather that inviting its raucous rock renegades to the party, Sub Pop reached out for more mature singer/songwriterly artists like Pretender Chrissie Hynde, folkie Dar Williams, and the husband-and-wife team of Aimee Mann and Michael Penn, as well as rootsy folk like Los Lobos, Hank Williams III, and Son Volt. If anything, Badlands suffers from too much world-weary earnestness and not enough liberties taken with the material. And for the most part that’s just fine: current Crooked Fingers and former Archers of Loaf frontman Eric Bachmann turns in a chilling “Mansion on the Hill” that sounds more like Springsteen than John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band, and Ani DiFranco keeps her attitude in check and lets “Used Cars” do most of the talking. But it’s telling that Hank III’s upbeat, two-stepping take on “Atlantic City” sounds so out of place next to these sensibly straight readings that he slows the last verse down to a moderate, melancholy strum.

If the artists on Badlands are so damn happy to be associated with such celebrated material that they don’t dare impose their own will on the songs, you’d almost have to say the opposite when it comes to American III. If songs had feelings, you can bet that Will “Palace Brother” Oldham’s “I See a Darkness,” Nick Cave’s “The Mercy Seat,” and U2’s “One” would be wearing verse-to-verse smiles at having made the Cash cut this time around. Cash does a number of his own tunes here too, including an elegantly simple (strummed acoustic, spare piano chords, three voices) “Field of Diamonds” (with backing vox by Sheryl Crow and June Carter Cash) and the prickly “Country Trash” (“Mama turns the leftovers into hash/I’m doing alright for country trash”). But the half-dozen obvious covers that frontload the disc, from Tom Petty’s defiant “I Won’t Back Down” to the Neil Diamond title track to David Alan Coe’s “Would You Lay with Me (In a Field of Snow),” set the tone for American III. Even when Cash plays a string of his own tunes, he seems to treat them the way he does these — like likable new neighbors coming by for that drink he promised them. You may wonder why with all the songs in the world to chose from (including some fine ones of his own), he would opt for Oldham’s “I See a Darkness.” Then again, Cash has earned the right not to be questioned about such matters.

— Matt Ashare