Jerk Music Critic: Johnny Cash, American IV: The Man Comes Around

Listening to the flaps and slaps of his lips stickied by illness and his lispy voice quavered by years, Cash's final album may be eclipsed by his storied discography but not by its raw emotion in this simple, acoustic production. The covers dominate the track list, but not generally to its detriment, especially his sombre tones of regret in Sting's "I Hung My Head" and his words only for June as he sings, earthily and unvarnished, of the "First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." Plus, no one can bring the hoarse truculence of Tex Ritter to a modern audience ("Sam Hall") better than Johnny. (Then again, there's his schlocky version of Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus," more amusing for its novelty than its actual skill, though I think Cash got the joke more than Martin Gore did.) The album's flaws are not small in number, especially the poor arrangement of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and the warbly off-key deviations in Lennon-McCartney's "In My Life" and others, and "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" is a strange choice tonally (as is his duet with Nick Cave); stranger still is that two stronger tracks from the original double LP ("Wichita Lineman" and "Big Iron") are completely missing from the current single-LP pressings and CD releases, apparently never to return. Fortunately, one song was not cut: none captures the wonder of this album more than "Hurt," the Trent Reznor track that despite the same lyrics, even the same music, turns a despairing, venomous flirtation with darkness into something upbeat, even hopeful, carried by resonant chords, stark guitar and that defiant voice. No sinner and no saint, and let alone the same person, captured the fumbling, faltering journey to God better than this self-described "biggest sinner of them all" and I can think of very few performers who ended great careers on terms as magnificent as this death mask of music. In songs like the traditional "Danny Boy" and "Streets of Laredo," and the album's sunny, hopeful conclusion in "We'll Meet Again," we know he faced his end with peace knowing the Man in Black will be washed white as snow. Godspeed. (Content: drug references on "Hurt," adult themes on "First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.")

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Express Yourself

The Jerk Music Critic is a collection of amateur music reviews I wrote largely non-professionally between the 1990s and today. Some of these reviews are contemporary and some are retrospective, and a few are rather dated, but all are intended to be free-standing and permanent records of my completely worthless musical opinion. They are presented in no particular order and "new" reviews that occur may actually be simply prior ones I've only now transcribed. Older reviews have been edited to hopefully remove inaccuracies later revealed, as well as add brief content advisories (see "Smash the PMRC") and, where reissues exist with different tracks, brief commentaries on these later additions (the actual star review was not altered).

If you're looking for a specific artist, or just interested to see what I really liked (or really didn't), "When I Break Down" indexes reviews by artist and by number of stars awarded (see "Star Chart" for an explanation).

As we move deeper into the Internet music age where the album format might seem hopelessly antiquated, there is still some artistic value in the LP to those artists who still take advantage of it, and some of these recordings can only be properly appreciated in that context. I hope you enjoy these reviews and recommendations, and don't take them too seriously. — Cameron Kaiser

Star Chart

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An instant classic. Substantially advances/d the state of the art, either technologically, stylistically, or (preferentially) both, and is outstanding music besides. Buy it.

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A excellent album. Nearly every song is a gem; nearly every piece is a winner. Falls short of 5 stars for want of that certain special something, but the difference is in impact, not in musical quality. Buy it.

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Solid. Mostly good songs with a few clinkers. Salvageable with a good playlist. Buy it cheap.

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Mixed. Some good songs stand out, but not enough to make it listenable as a whole. Buy the good songs on iTunes.

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Bad. One or two tracks of even decent quality. Buy the good songs cheap on iTunes.

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How did this get released?

Smash the PMRC

I don't advocate for censorship or unnuanced black and white stickers, but I do advocate for parents being able to raise kids in the way they see fit, which might include introducing albums of controversial yet artistic merit at a point in their child's life when they can better appreciate it. The content summaries are intended to be a very general guide, reflective of only my own personal sensibilities and mine alone, and do not substitute in any way for a parent actually sitting down and listening to the album themselves. If you excessively rely on my content advisories, then I'm the one raising your kid, and you really don't want that.