The Man Comes Around [Bonus Tracks]

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Editorial reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review
On first thought, the idea of the Man in Black recording such covers as "Bridge over Troubled Water", "Danny Boy" and "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" might seem odd, even for an artist who's been able to put his personal stamp on just about everything. But The Man Comes Around, which also draws on Cash's original songs as well as those by Nine Inch Nails ("Hurt"), Sting ("I Hung My Head") and Depeche Mode ("Personal Jesus"), may be one of the most autobiographical albums of the 70-year-old singer-songwriter's career. Nearly every tune seems chosen to afford the ailing giant of popular music a chance to reflect on his life, and look ahead to what's around the corner. From the opening track--Cash's own "The Man Comes Around", filled with frightening images of Armageddon--the album, produced by Rick Rubin, advances a quiet power and pathos, built around spare arrangements and unflinching honesty in performance and subject. In 15 songs, Cash moves through dark, haunted meditations on death and destruction, poignant farewells, testaments to everlasting love, and hopeful salutes to redemption. He sounds as if he means every word, his baritone-bass, frequently frayed and ravaged, taking on a weary beauty. By the time he gets to the Beatles' "In My Life", you'll very nearly cry. Go ahead. He sounds as if he's about to, too. --Alanna Nash

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Customer reviews

review by: A groan man date: 2008-06-10 rating:
Honest, Insightful and Human
The five American Recordings comprise the most honest art I have found as a great man comes to terms with the human condition as his life builds to its close. If you add to them The Sound of Fury by Billy Fury you have the perfect bookends to the male life.

Ray Gill

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review by: I like banjos me. date: 2008-06-10 rating:
Outstanding
I can't say anything that hasn't already been said. Buy this album, you will NOT regret it.

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review by: date: 2008-05-16 rating:
Worth every penny
I thought Hurt and a couple of the other main tracks that I owned already would outshadow the rest but this is brilliant from start to finish.

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review by: date: 2008-01-07 rating:
A bleak picture
I bought this only having seen the video for 'Hurt' - one of the most moving pieces of film I've ever seen.

I have this picture in my head every time I listen to this CD - a broken-down church on the prairies, with The Man in Black walking slowly away from it as the setting sun sets the sky afire.

And then there's the range of songs. They're the sound of a broken-down, doubting preacher - the cheerfully apocalyptic opening track captures some of the blood and fire that is there, under the surface in every track, but too often it's a memory, and Cash's voice is filled with the sadness of a man who remembers what he was and knows he has fallen from what he was.

That's not to say that this is a hopeless, bleak CD. There is hope here, there is loves and there is strength in these songs that refuse to give up, that refuse to be cowed by the years. There is even Cash's humour.

Great.


review by: date: 2007-08-15 rating:
The Johnny Cash Album To Own
I own all the Johnny Cash American Recordings and have listened a great deal to them all. All 5 albums are good, although my least favorites are the first and last ones. Of the whole lot, still, this is the one to take to a desert island.

A Man Comes Around is recorded at a time Cash's health is getting worse. One senses the urgency in delivering the tunes and yet having the strength and power to fulfill such a mission. As on Unchained and Solitary Man, Cash took many cover songs and made them his own. Cases in point are songs like U2's One and Tom Petty's I Won't Back Down. On this album Cash really pushed the envelope, taking even very well known classics and making them, for those who hear them, in a sense his own.

The power is evident on the opening title track in which Cash melds together quotations from the bible forming a coherent song about the approaching hand of death; he obviously means business. The following track, Hurt, is, of all things, a Nine Inch Nails cover in which Cash changed the lyrics slightly. The vocal in the song makes it so poignant that the original songwriter has admitted (in a complementary way) that Cash basically stole it from him and made it his own. What follows are mostly eclectic covers done in a tender and yet forceful manner. There is not a single weak tune on it, no need for a remote control for this one. The scaled down version of Bridge Over Troubled Water is worth paying special note to, the text comes much more to life as opposed to the more produced version done by Simon & Garfunkel.

This album is among only a handful of albums released during the last 10 years I rate, from start to finish, as being close to perfection. If you want something more than a Johnny Cash compilation, this is the one to pick.

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