American V: A Hundred Highways, the latest Johnny Cash album, was released Tuesday. Circuit City is (was?) selling it for $8.99, which was the best deal I could find. If you don't have the CD, go buy it, now. I'll wait.

. . .

Okay, then. I went and got the CD Tuesday morning, and observed the birth of our nation by listening to the valedictory testament of one of our greatest musicians. From the advanced press the album had received, I thought it might be a bloody depressing way to spend one's holiday, and I envisioned myself shut up in a darkened room sobbing as the fireworks burst outside. But the album turned out to be a bit different than what I'd imagined. Reading early reviews, two key traits of the album had come into focus: The album is mired in songs about death, and Johnny Cash's voice at this point was wrecked by asthma and overall poor health, to the point that he could barely get through a song. But after listening to the album rather compulsively, I'd have to say that, if neither claim is completely false, they don't really capture the essense of what American V is.

Death is a theme in every song, whether explicitly about death or not. This is all but unavoidable in the context of a posthumous release, of songs recorded by Cash after the death of June Carter Cash as a form of therapy. But Cash had clearly made peace with his mortality, and as a result the album may be sad, but Cash's hope and peace mean it never gets to be truly depressing. Even a song like "On the Evening Train," a Hank Williams-penned dead-wife ballad, is made somewhat more bearable by Cash's strong and confident vocals.

So yes, his voice shows considerable wear on the album, and certainly certain tracks show this more than others. On "Rose of My Heart," for instance, or "If You Could Read My Mind," a shockingly powerful Gordon Lightfoot cover. But discussion of how his voice was gone at this point are wildly off-base, and seem to overlook that Cash was not that strong of a singer mechanically, as it is traditionally understood. And while Cash's struggle for breath (which Cash himself addresses in "Like the 309," the last song he ever wrote) lends a fraility to several tracks, it also serves as a counterweight to tracks on which Cash in is fine form. The album closes with "I'm Free From The Chain Gang Now," on which Cash's voice is probably the strongest you'll hear on this album. The lyrics may suggest the song is about literal freedom, but from the conviction in Cash's voice, I'm confident Cash is singing about freedom of a more spiritual sense.

I really don't know what else to say about this amazing album. It's a remarkable coda to an amazing musical career, and a fitting eulogy to a great man. You've got songs about death, about prison, about trains, about love, about God. And even in the last song he wrote, about his casket being transported (by train, of course), his understated wit comes through. How can this not be the best album of 2006?