Heard Here

American IV: The Man Comes Around
Johnny Cash

A Johnny Cash album is something that you can always count on. You know almost exactly what to expect and you wouldn’t have it any other way — the consistency is what draws you in. American IV: The Man Comes Around is no exception, and Johnny Cash proves he still has the ability to write great songs and to be as completely distinctive as everyone knows he is. Cash has the unique ability to make a song about a prison convict’s exploits —“Give My Love To Rose”- sound melodic and somehow comforting in its sparse sadness. The usual Cash fare is here: songs about prison, murder, despair and heartbreak accompanied by jangly acoustic guitar, and not a whole lot else. But this minimalist approach is something else that Cash does so well; he can say a lot with only two chords and his voice.
As Cash has gotten older (he turned 70 this year) his voice has mellowed and he seems to have used this to his advantage, delivering his songs in a gravely spoken/sung drawl that has become his new trademark. Cash also continues his new tradition of covering contemporary and not-so-contemporary songs and making them uniquely his own. On this album, covers of Sting, Hank Williams, the Eagles and the Beatles sit alongside “Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails, “Personal Jesus” by Depeche Mode and Cash originals.
Although the choice of songs looks like an incongruous mish-mosh, Johnny Cash is able to integrate the wide variety into his personal style. More random is the choice of guests on this album. Fiona Apple and Don Henley each do a song with the Man in Black and end up breaking the flow of the songs rather than contributing anything valuable to them. Nick Cave puts in a good effort as he lends a hand on Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” but overall the guests on this album seem to detract from the sense of unity that Cash’s personality lends to the whole thing.
The few spotty moments seem to be cases of poor judgment; the cover of the traditional Irish song “Danny Boy” fails to inspire the same introspective sadness of “Hurt” or “Tear Stained Letter.” Cash undeniably is a survivor and this album proves that he is still capable of delivering powerful and emotional songs with attitude.

—Derek Schleelein

Yanqui U.X.O.
Godspeed, You Black Emperor!

If you’ve got a half-hour to spare you can trace the lines of the illustration on the back of the new Godspeed, You Black Emperor! record Yanqui U.X.O. deciphering the cryptic handwriting as the diagram connects one major corporation (Sony, for example) with their involvement in US production of fighter jets, Lockhead missles or other weapons technologies. Or you can leave the CD jacket alone and let the band’s dystopic epics speak for themselves. Either way, the drama, beauty and sheer magnitude of this Montreal ensemble gets its point across — that corporate capital has invaded every aspect of our lives.
GYBE!, the post-modern, post-rock, post-everything community made up of three guitarists, two bassists, a drummer and assorted string players, have, over the course of three full albums and one EP, mixed the Velvet Underground’s trademark drone together with the melodic sensibilities of Black Sabbath and the bombast of a Wagner opera. Throw in the some heavy-handed, conspiracy-obsessed leftist politics and a few field recordings of a weapons-hoarding poet from New England and GYBE! will have you running for the bunker thinking the end-times to be just around the corner.
Like their 1999 double-album Lift Your Skinny Fists like Antennas to Heaven, this Steve Albini-produced disk features more of the same slow building, climax-intensive,10 minute-plus tunes that have become the group’s trademark. Yanqui U.X.O., though, contains precious few field recordings, a stark contrast with their earlier records whose collage pieces and interview sections formed the backbone of much of the music. Instead, Yanqui gives more than ample room for Godspeed to flex their massive musical muscles. Take, for example, the third track, “Rockets fall on Rocket Falls.” Here, a lone guitar begins with a shaky, descending melody reminiscent of some lost Bach fugue. Another chiming guitar appears, followed by a viola mimicking the first guitar’s melody. More strings enter with varying melodic profiles as a bass lays down the root notes amid the steady clamor of the cymbals. Inevitably, the dam breaks with the drums exploding into a steady gallop and the screaming guitars rising in some wordless Hosanna for the left as the strings strain to keep up — a climax predictable as it is absolutely indispensable.
Though Yanqui U.X.O. never reaches the bliss of the opening minutes on Lift Your Skinny Fists…, nor the fury of that record’s second track, it does manage a consistency over its 75 minutes that GYBE! failed to accomplish with its earlier offerings. Melodies grow and mutate, fade to a near whisper and then suddenly erupt with such conviction and power, the question of whether one seriously accepts the band’s politics or tosses them aside as mere pretentious rock posturing becomes beside the point. Paradoxically, for all of GYBE!’s political hyperbole (the CD jacket urges the consumer to steal Yanqui U.X.O.) and the uncanny ability of their music to make their doom-’n’-gloom global vision seem very real, their seething epics have the power to move on a purely visceral level irrespective of their political intentions.
Pretentious or not, Yanqui U.X.O. quite simply rocks.

—John MacDonald