Johnny Cash - Live From Austin, TX

Johnny Cash plays Austin like it's a living room full of old friends on this live set, taped for the Austin City Limits stage in 1987 and first released in 2005.

The timing makes it fascinating. Cash had recently parted ways with Columbia after nearly three decades, and the late 1980s were a commercially quiet stretch, years before his celebrated comeback with Rick Rubin. Yet there is no sign of a man in decline here. Backed by his long-serving road band, with June Carter Cash and Anita Carter on vocals, he sounds relaxed, wry and in complete command of his own legend.

The hits arrive with that unmistakable boom-chicka-boom intact. Ring of Fire opens the show with a punch of trumpet, and the train-track rhythm of Folsom Prison Blues still rolls like it did in Sun Studio days. The real treasures are the story songs: Kris Kristofferson's Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down is weary and beautiful, and his take on John Prine's Sam Stone lands with quiet devastation.

Where Did We Go Right, sung with June, adds a sweet, teasing warmth to the set.

It is an intimate portrait of the Man in Black between eras, and a reminder that his voice never needed reinventing.