Johnny cash the man comes around

Johnny Cash - American IV: The Man Comes Around. - sound recording review

American/Lost Highway 339

Johnny Cash's ragged and frail voice lends much subtextual power to this very personal and diverse collection of traditional folk, country and pop songs. The songs cover ground ranging from Armageddon and religious belief through life, love, defiance and death. This is an album that could not have been made by an artist in the springtime of life.

Cash's music has often shown much affinity with folk as with country music. The presence of a couple of traditional folk songs and the spare, mostly-acoustic arrangements, make this an album that will be savored by many folk music fans. It is quite remarkable the way that Cash redefines some of these songs: John Lennon and Paul McCartney and Paul Simon wrote "In My Life" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water" as young men in their twenties, but Cash sings them with an old man's lifetime of experience. These versions are not as pretty as the originals, but they are infused with much more meaning. Similarly, Ewan MacColl wrote "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," as a man who was in the early stages of love. Cash revisits the song as man singing to the woman he has shared a lifetime with.

Other highlights include a rerecording of Cash's old song, "Give My Love to Rose," and a duet with Nick Cave on Hank Williams's "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" that may be as lonesome as anything you'll ever hear. Two songs are sung from the point of view of killers awaiting execution. Sting's "I Hung My Head," a first-person account of recklessness that leads to death, tells of a killer ashamed of what he's done. But in the traditional "Sam Hall," the murderer is unrepentant. Cash ends with the optimistic WWII song, "We'll Meet Again," and leaves us waiting for the next time.