1/11/2005 02:01:24 PM|||paul|||I hurt myself today|||Even as I write this I am listening to the late Johnny Cash's last album, American IV: The Man Comes Around, and I'm finding it very hard to write for the barrage rising through my stomach to my frontal lobe.

I've always been interested in Cash, his music pressed into me on many long drives with my parents from Onslow, Tom Price or Karratha to Perth. Even more recently when, on my trip to Esperance last week I discovered I had the Man In Black 'best of' album in the car I subjected Lee to my hapless sing-along renditions of 'Boy called Sue' and 'Dont take your guns to town' while he sat helplessly trapped in the passenger's seat, scratching at the window. Still, it's the kind of music that until recently I would pick as a back-drop to parts of my childhood, but not any more.

This guy became a bit of an idle for me again a few years ago with his cover of Soundgarden's Rusty Cage - this old Country guy with his musical taste that runs at least partly parallel to my own. Then last year I heard his cover of Nick Cave's The Mercy Seat and was astounded. This guy knows how to take a song and own it.

This quality of his in particular applies to his rendition of Trent Reznor's Hurt. Not only does this extend his list of cool, relatively contemporary covers, but it is barely recognisable from the original; hell - I loved the song before, but I don't think I've ever actually listened to the words. It turns out Reznor had the incredible foresight to write a song about Johnny Cash's life for him. Additionally, if you get the chance, watch the film clip (apparently you can get a special edition of The Man Comes Around that includes a DVD with the clips on it.) Obviously on death's door, Cash plays a piano and sings in a wobbly voice of his lost friends and meaningless empire while June Carter Cash, his wife, stands behind him like a ghost, staring at him helplessly with tears in her eyes.

The whole album seems to be some externalised internal narrative - very personal and moving. It opens strongly with his own When The Man Comes Around: a powerful song full of doomsday visions taken from Revelations. The rest of the album treads up and down through sadness and reflection.

Unfortunately J.B.'s didn't have American III: Solitary Man, the album containing his personalised version of U2's One and the aforementioned Nick Cave's The Mercy Seat (although Cave does sing with him on this album in I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry), but the album I did get surprised me with its tight production and playlist: Fiona Apple provides backing vocals in Paul Simon's Bridge Over Troubled Water, there's awesome covers Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus and the Eagles' Desperado. Also, I'd never realised I Hung My Head was a Sting song, but it hardly seems relevant when Cash wrings it out and slings it over his shoulder. |||110542514518377928