The man comes around

Description

Without being morbid, it is quite possible that this treasure is the last album of Johnny Cash. The man in black has become an old wounded and tired beast. It is at a canonical age and in lamentable health that Cash paradoxically releases his best albums since his beginnings. The "American" series, of which "The Man Comes Around" is the fourth installment, continues to rightly provoke true cascades of praise.
The principle has been the same since "American Recordings," the first chapter released in 1994: the legend reinterprets in acoustic version the songs of others, and not necessarily those one would expect... Thus he has sung Soundgarden, Beck, Nick Cave (for a memorable version of The Mercy Seat), Will Oldham, or Tom Petty, all wrapped up by producer Rick Rubin, a longtime fan who advised the legend to rediscover the sobriety and starkness of his beginnings. The result, a kind of gothic folk, has no other equivalent in the history of American popular music.

With "The Man Comes Around," Cash sounds more sorrowful than ever (his friends seem to be disappearing one by one, Waylon Jennings being the latest), and he both reflects on himself and pays tribute to the various songwriters invited. The voice has lost strength, and it is a man who is dying and seems to say goodbye that we hear here... Hence the power of the covers of well-known songs (Danny Boy, the traditional Irish song sung at funerals, or the poignant I'm so lonesome I could Cry by Hank Williams – here sung in duet with Nick Cave – or Give My Love To Rose, which he had once popularized in the prisons of Folsom or San Quentin)...
Among the inevitable surprises, covers of Depeche Mode (Personal Jesus), Nine Inch Nails (for a terrifying Hurt), and Sting (!)...
The result is on par with the previous "Solitary Man": Sublime, serious, and moving..