The first week of this month, an album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard sales charts that was not the work of a silicone-enhanced teenybopper, angst-ridden emo rocker or enthusiastically vulgar rapper. Instead, that No. 1 album was the work of a frail, ailing country singer. A frail, ailing country singer who's been dead for four years.

Yes, Johnny Cash is back.

In American V: A Hundred Highways, Cash presents a musical last will and testament, condensing a lifetime of songs and storytelling into 12 spare tracks. Lonesome love songs? Check. Hymns for an avenging God? Check. Tunes about trains as metaphors for death? Check.

In other words, this album distills what made the later stages of Cash's career so affecting. The right songs, about the right subjects, sung in the right voice.

Producer Rick Rubin resurrected Cash's recording career in the 1990s with the American series of recordings, starting with an all-acoustic album and moving into rock and popular songs as the years passed. On American V, Rubin restrains his gimmicky urges (no Nine Inch Nails cover versions here), presenting Cash's creaky voice on a shimmering bed of acoustic guitars and piano.

It hits the heart, hard.

The first half of the album makes the strongest impression. Cash's version of the spiritual "God's Gonna Cut You Down" (recorded by Moby as "Run On") is an ominous, ghostly warning. His take on Gordon Lightfoot's "If You Could Read My Mind" opens tear ducts in seconds. And "Like the 309," the last song Cash wrote, shows the creaky crooner in fine fettle.

Don't let these constant references to age mislead. Cash may have been near death as he recorded this album, but his voice retained its essential quality to the end. Indeed, his singing on American V outclasses his work on 2002's American IV. He might rasp here or there. He might be short of breath occasionally. But these reminders of mortality serve the downbeat material, and Cash never lets them break the flow of his storytelling.

The album's second half is a harder nut to crack, as the volume decreases and song quality slips slightly. But on repeated listening, these bland-sounding songs -"A Legend in My Time,""Rose of My Heart"- gain stature, Cash's inimitable voice lending them purpose and weight. By the time he closes the album with "Free From the Chain Gang Now," you're ready to curse that avenging God for taking Cash from us too soon.

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By CLAY McCUISTION

Monitor staff