Call
Cash Cabin Sessions, Vol. 3
a return to roots of sorts for
Todd Snider
. After many years of recording albums with rock instrumentation -- including his side project
Hard Working Americans
-- the troubadour decided to strip his music back to just a guitar and voice, along with a couple other unobtrusive elements, cutting an album at
Johnny Cash
's Cash Cabin Studio.
Cash
's presence is evoked a few times -- explicitly on "The Ghost of Johnny Cash," and sideways on "Cowboy Jack Clement's Waltz," which is a salute to one of
's collaborators -- and there are faint echoes of other greats in this collection of talking blues, ballads, and folk tunes. All this is part of a troubadour tradition that
Snider
has long called his own, and here he emphasizes how he's absorbed those sounds and styles, turning them into something idiosyncratic and distinctive. This unadorned setting shifts attention not just to
's verbal wit but to his sly phrasing: "Working on a Song" and "Talking Reality Television Blues" find him setting up punch lines only to deliver them in unexpected ways. Such subtle deviations from expectations are one of the joys of listening to
, and throughout
, he relies on these tricks of the trade, without ever letting the seams show. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine