A befitting swan song

The natural inclination of any discerning listener going into “Ain’t No Grave,” Johnny Cash’s second posthumous record and final collection of recordings, is to assume the bottom of the barrel has been scraped and the songs will be the weakest of his American Recordings era.

Fortunately, that is not the case.

“Where The Man Comes Around” and “A Hundred Highways” reconstructed the confident Johnny Cash of yore as a broken old man, obsessed with death and what lies beyond it, and “Ain’t No Grave” elaborates on those themes.

“I Corinthians 15:55,” the last song Cash wrote before he died, is the album’s emotional centerpiece. His weathered, powerful vocals move mountains when laid against the song’s bare acoustic guitar and piano.

A beautiful cover of Queen Liliuokalani’s “Aloha ’Oe” closes the record and, in effect, Johnny Cash’s career. When he sings “’Ere I depart / Until we meet again,” we’re invited to look back over the nearly sixty years of music that Johnny Cash has given us and mourn his loss once more.

Aloha ’Oe, Mr. Cash. Farewell to you.