It would be nice to say Johnny Cash sounds as good as he ever did. But he doesn't. Years of hard living as a young man and recent life-threatening illnesses have ravaged his unmistakable baritone, leaving him so short of breath at times that he was barely able to record vocal tracks on his new album, American IV: The Man Comes Around.
Yet Cash persevered, and parts are, quite simply, stunning. The high points are among the highest of Cash's legendary career, and though the album ends up leaning a bit too heavily on comfortable standards, even the throwaway moments are often more gripping than many artists can ever hope to achieve.
The fact that Cash even has a new album is noteworthy. Chronic pneumonia nearly killed him in early 2001, and doctors for years misdiagnosed his problems, first as Parkinson's disease, later as Shy-Drager syndrome, a condition that can cause blackouts and tremors.
"Now they say it's autonomic neuropathy," Cash said in the press material accompanying The Man Comes Around. "I'm not sure what that name means, except I think it means that you're getting old and shaky."
"I found strength to work on this album just to spite the disease," said Cash, 70.
"I came in and opened up my mouth and tried to let something come out ... there are tracks on this album that I recorded when it was the last thing in the world I thought I'd be able to do. And those are the ones that have the feeling, the passion, the fire, the fervor."
Cash's voice is not as strong as it once was, but it's no less commanding. He can still induce chills with a single word, even when he is clearly straining to be heard.
He has plenty to say on The Man Comes Around, in his own words and through the songs of others. As he has since The American Recordings in 1994, Cash chose interesting, sometimes daring songs to cover. This time, the gutsiest track on the album is "Hurt," a Nine Inch Nails song about the self-loathing of heroin addiction. Cash's version builds from the spare accompaniment of an acoustic guitar to a distorted cry of pain and yearning for redemption swept along by thundering piano and dark strings.
"I think 'Hurt' is the best anti-drug song I ever heard. If it doesn't scare you away from taking drugs, nothing will," said Cash, who has battled and overcome addictions to pills and booze. "I never did the needle, but I did everything else."
Not all the cover songs are compelling. "Bridge Over Troubled Water" is creaky and lacks the sweeping passion of the original, despite a guest appearance by Fiona Apple. Cash sings with Don Henley on "Desperado," and though the song retains a sense of gray world-weariness, it's about as insightful as a limerick when compared to the next tune on the album, a stellar duet with Nick Cave on Hank Williams' classic "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry."
Cash revisits some of his own songs, too, but the best song on The Man Comes Around is the title track, the first new composition he has recorded in years.
The music is simple, with Cash singing over uptempo acoustic guitar and measured, bone-chilling bass chords from a piano. The lyrics are stark and apocalyptic, and he opens the song with a reading from the Book of Revelation. The idea for the tune came to Cash in a dream, in which Queen Elizabeth of England told him, "Johnny Cash, you're just like a thorn tree in a whirlwind."
Eventually, he discovered that whirlwinds represent God and thorn trees are synonymous with the arrogance and obstinacy of humanity - allegories that hit home with the rebellious yet spiritual Cash.
"I couldn't get it off my mind, and I started writing." After years and many drafts, the tune is a song about what he regards as the ultimate test of humankind's obstinacy - Judgment Day and the concept of redemption.
It's a stark way to open the record, but The Man Comes Around - song and album alike - are ultimately hopeful evocations of the notion that has sustained Cash for 50 years: that despite the pain, heartache and tragedy life seems to freely dispense at times, somehow the human spirit endures, even triumphs. As it happens, so does Johnny Cash.
Eric R. Danton writes for the Hartford Courant, a Tribune Publishing newspaper.