On his first album since being diagnosed with a neurological disorder in 1997, the 68-year-old Johnny Cash had a new vulnerability to his voice. Here he sings classics both old and new, harmonizing with Tom Petty on a defiant “I Won’t Back Down,” while the eighteenth century ballad “Wayfaring Stranger,” which Cash cut earlier in his career, is downright spooky: When he sings, “There's no sickness, no toil nor danger in that bright land to which I go,” he sounds like a man ready to go home.

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