Neil Spencer 

Various: Look Again to the Wind review – homage to Johnny Cash’s radical 60s album

The country giant’s tribute to Native Americans is given an impressive makeover on its 50th anniversary, writes Neil Spencer
  
  

Gillian Welch, Look again to the wind, CD
Gillian Welch, whose As Long As the Grass Shall Grow is 'entrancing'. Photograph: John M Heller/Getty Images Photograph: John M Heller/Getty Images

Tribute albums frequently betray their subject, but not this homage to Johnny Cash’s Bitter Tears, the country giant’s 1964 salute to Native Americans. A concept album about a discomfiting cause – the US’s treatment of its indigenous people – Tears was a radical statement resisted, to Cash’s fury, by the Nashville establishment. For its 50th anniversary, producer Joe Henry gathers a stellar house band that takes turns to lead. Gillian Welch delivers an entrancing As Long As the Grass Shall Grow; Emmylou does likewise with Apache Tears. Steve Earle drawls: “I ain’t no fan of Custer” and instrumentals evoke North America’s haunted plains. Very fine.

 

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