Johnny Cash: The Man Comes Around/Brian W. Fairbanks-Writer

Johnny Cash: The Man Comes Around
(American)

Early in his career, Johnny Cash earned the title "Man In Black" for his monochromatic fashion sense. But the country music legend was interested in something more important than advancing a cool, sinister image. He had made a vow to purge color from his wardrobe in symbolic protest of poverty, injustice, and the many other ills of American society.

Now 70, Cash's outlook has, if anything, grown darker. Recently widowed, and suffering from diabetes, failing eyesight, and other health problems, Cash can be excused for the bleakness of his vision. As mortality casts its shadow more ominously than ever over his life and the world, his music only gains in power.

The Man Comes Around, the fourth album in his series of American Recordings, opens with Cash's self-penned title song. Inspired by the New Testament's Book of Revelation, the song concerns the coming apocalypse.

How do you follow the end of the world?

Cash does it by diving head-first into the abyss, the only place that could have inspired Trent Reznor's "Hurt," a good song on its own that rises to epic status when filtered through Cash's grizzled vocal chords. "I hurt myself today to see if I still feel," he sings in the opening verse, then catalogues his sins, ones we've all committed to one degree or another. In this song, Cash acts almost as a Messianic figure willing to bear our burden, to carry our cross, no matter that his own is heavy enough. "And you can have it all/my empire of dirt," he sings, with a maturity lacking in the original recording by Nine Inch Nails.

There are signs of hope to be found in Cash's take on Paul Simon's "Bridge Over Troubled Water," and, surprisingly, on a cover of the romantic ballad, "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." The thought of Cash singing the latter could have easily inspired a chuckle or two, but his sincerity (it is a rather obvious love song directed to the late June Carter Cash) makes it meaningful rather than merely maudlin.

There's room for more traditional ballads, as well. Hank Williams's "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" is as fresh as ever, and Cash's version of John Lennon's "In My Life" shows that the Beatles could, at times, be outdone when performing the Fab Four songbook.

The Man Comes Around shows that, like fine wine, Johnny Cash improves with age, and, like the color black, never goes out of style.

Brian W. Fairbanks
Entertainment Editor