Rating: NN
The unlikely collaboration between producer Rick Rubin and Johnny Cash doesn’t prove fourth time lucky with The Man Comes Around. Once again we get a stripped-down concept focusing on the frail Cash’s now quavering voice. Unfortunately, Rubin’s choice of contemporary cover material like Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus tends toward novelty value, and Cash embarrassingly stumbles through it as if he were trying to read the words off a napkin. Badly chosen duet partners like Fiona Apple, who can’t harmonize, don’t help. Cash’s gasping renditions of Danny Boy, In My Life and We’ll Meet Again sound like the final farewell of a singer who knows this is the last curtain call. Sad, really.
