Johnny Cash: The Man Comes Around

By GRAHAM REID

(Herald rating: * * * )

After last year's third instalment of "The American Recordings" series, in which Cash delivered seminal treatments of Will Oldham's I See A Darkness, U2's One and Tom Petty's I Won't Back Down, he became ill and they looked - and in places sounded - like a farewell message.

But he's back and the man who found the Lord in the late 60s is now preparing to meet his maker. Or at least that's what it sounds like in the apocalyptic images of the self-penned title track, a tear-inducing and slow version of John Lennon's In My Life, a revision of First Time Ever I Saw Your Face (now a religious ballad) and a moody take on Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus.

A few tracks - notably Bridge Over Troubled Waters and Streets of Laredo - don't have quite the same frisson and, despite the moving material, there's a sense this fourth volume of the American Recordings doesn't have the latent power of the previous ones, but at 70 Cash still commands attention.

Label: American