Album Review: Ryan Adams & The Cardinals – Jacksonville City Nights

This was the second of 3 albums released by Ryan Adams in 2005, and it sees him team up with the Cardinals to produce his most country effort yet. The opening 2 tracks A Kiss Before I Go are enough to send all but the most committed country-phile running screaming from the barn. The opener with its lyrics of “one shot, one beer and a kiss before I go” are blended with a somewhat cheesy country melody. Mercifully it’s only 2 minutes long. Second track The End(!) is a country waltz about “cotton fields” and “Jacksonville”. The question is: is he being serious here? It’s dangerously close to pastiche.

Later, Peaceful Valley has the strangulated vocal from his Cold Roses album, while My Heart Is Broken has to be a piss-take, it’s almost too much with its honky-tonk steel guitar and strings. So that’s the dodgy tracks out of the way. I’m happy to say the rest of the album is a distinct improvement, starting with Hard Way To Fall, like a cross between Bob Dylan’s Tonight I’ll Be Staying Her With You and Ryan’s own Answering Bell. It’s still very country, but without any cringe factor.

He collaborates with Norah Jones on the ballad Dear John, which would be one of the more tender songs on the album except for their vocals which are a little over-cooked. The less self-conscious songs are what he does best, tracks like The Hardest Part and Withering Heights are sprightly, rootsy finger-picking songs with the merest hint of country. Special mention for a great piano part on Withering Heights.

Silver Bullets is a beautiful piano and strings ballad like something off his superb Love Is Hell. This is Ryan at his most tender, a voice full of regret singing “cause I can’t see the sun, but I know it’s going away, and I can’t make you love me”.

September is a sparse, brooder like something off the 29 album as is Pa, a dark tale about “Pa drove to town yesterday to pick out her grave”. It’s not all maudlin laments. Trains is a quick-stepping, chugging Johnny Cash like number which suits him quite well and my version has a bonus track Jeane, a sprightly banjo strum, followed by a somewhat unnecessary version of the hoary old chestnut Always On My Mind.

Definitely one of Ryan Adams’ weaker albums and definitely over-long, there are still some songs here worth investigating.

Album Review: Ryan Adams & The Cardinals – Cold Roses

After the fall-out from the botched release of one of Ryan Adams’ finest hours (Love Is Hell), his next move was to form the Cardinals. 2005 saw him release three albums, double album Cold Roses being the first.

It’s a return to country-rock along the lines of Gold. Magnolia Mountain is quite an opener, building from an acoustic strum to a full blown rock anthem with Adams singing lines of regret like “ended up with nothing but scars, the scars became the lessons that we gave to our children after the war”. Sweet Illusion has an effortless guitar part underpinning a strong steel-guitar-tinged song, slightly let down by a very strained vocal. In fact Ryan Adams’ vocals are the Achilles heel of this album, he sounds almost strangled in parts.

He doesn’t get it right on his more hushed vocals, Meadowlake Street’s falsetto doesn’t quite work either. However, it doesn’t ruin the music, which is a kind of muted country-rock ballad which explodes into life three minutes in when the full band make their entrance.

Less successful are rocker Beautiful Sorta which is almost as horrid as its title, and the hokey, cod-country of Cherry Lane and the title track. Dance All Night is harmonica-led country-rock which sounds like Hallelujah or Desire from the unreleased 48 Hours.

Better are the comfortable, effortless ones like the vaguely-MOR (in a good way!) When Will You Come Back Home, Mockingbird and Rosebud. On these songs Adams’ vocals sound huskier and less forced, which suits him a lot better. Fans of the vulnerable piano pieces and shimmering guitars on Love Is Hell will find much to like in How Do You Keep Love Alive and Blossom.

It’s not all mope ‘n’ misery. Let It Ride and If I Am A Stranger are strong uptempo country rockers, while Life Is Beautiful is a gloriously overblown country-rock ballad.

It’s a long double album, stretching to 77 minutes with several missteps along the way, but at its best it stands up with some of Ryan Adams’ better work.

Album Review: Ryan Adams & The Cardinals - III/IV

Review for www.meg.ie

Ryan Adams - a riposte

Some time ago I wrote scathingly about Ryan Adams. I feel I made some valid points. However I omitted an awful lot more about this vital artist.

He broke into the music scene first as frontman of Whiskeytown. Their debut album, Faithless Street is, for some, Ryan Adams' finest hour. If you have any taste at all for country or alt.country you will not believe how perfect this album sounds. It lurches from REM style jangle (Midway Park), to Replacements trash-rock (Drank Like a River) to plaintive ballads (the title track and many others). I could write for ages about this album, it's a real underrated classic. None of the songs are particularly original, they are all vaguely country but they all sound SO good. The 21 track version is a must as the extra tracks are well worth it. There are some great lyrics about wanting to play country but being in a rock n roll band (Faithless Street / Lo-Fi Tennessee Mountain Angel). In fact, the best thing about these songs is they sound effortless, almost 'tossed-off'.

They issued a stop-gap mini-album, Rural Free Delivery, which is of almost as high a standard (especially Pawnshop Ain't No Place for a Wedding Ring). Their next album Strangers' Almanac is much loved by the critics but I failed to warm to it. All the rough edges have been smoothed away, leaving some good tunes, but there's a smoothness and sameness to this release which doesn't move me.

The follow-up, Pneumonia, got lost in between record companies for years before finally being released in 2001. It's a decent collection of songs, with plenty of mope and lope along songs (Jacksonville Skyline, Sit and Listen to the Rain), along with poppier ones like (Don't Wanna Know Why, Bar Lights).

At the same time, Adams' solo career was kicking off. Before he released his proper debut, he recorded a collection of songs with Gillian Welch and David Rawlings known as the Destroyer Sessions, which I 'stumbled upon'. It's largely acoustic with some nice touches of glockenspiel etc, and most of the songs are unavailable elsewhere. It finishes with a hard-rocking version of Revelator, which Gillian Welch went on to record acoustically and it formed the title track of her third album. The prima-donna Ryan Adams is completely absent here.

His first official solo album, Heartbreaker is very good in patches though completely overrated. There are, however, some wonderful songs on it, apart from the much played Oh My Sweet Carolina and Come Pick Me Up, namely, My Winding Wheel which is like a modern-day Dylan song (and that's a good thing) and the downright lovely AMY.

The follow-up, Suicide Handbook was rejected by his record company for being too depressing. Having heard it, it's a little one-paced for my tastes, but some of the better songs (Dear Chicago, Answering Bell) were salvaged for future releases. Gold was released instead, a sprawling, commercial collection which seemed a little calculated to make Mr. Adams a star. The Springsteen-esque pose with the US flag on the cover was a little much. The material contained within is like a fascinating game of spot the influence, everybody from, Springsteen, to Neil Young, to Elton John, Who and Rolling Stones referenced. It's a good collection of songs if a little too knowing.

There were stories flying about in the aftermath of this release of a whole load of albums ready for release. As well as the aforementioned Suicide Handbook, 48 Hours was a country collection apparently inspired by Alanis Morrissette, and there was the Stockholm (or Swedish) sessions and also a 'rock' album with a band called the 'Pinkhearts', and he was even rumoured to have recorded an acoustic, country version of the Strokes debut, Is This It. What was becoming clear was that being an alt.country prodigy was not enough for Adams, but his record company couldn't keep up. Most of the material was not released, though a collection of highlights from all of these came out, entitled 'Demolition', which doesn't really work as a cohesive listen, going from AOR rocker (Nuclear) to sensitive ballad (Dear Chicago).

Notwithstanding all of this, his next solo album proper, Love Is Hell, was rejected by his record company Lost Highway. Instead he produced a whole new album of rock songs, Rock N Roll, which for the most part didn't convince. At this stage, I, like many others was rapidly reaching Ryan Adams overload. The last thing I wanted to hear was that Love Is Hell was now also coming out, in the form of 2 EPs.

I relented, however, and purchased them. Supposedly inspired by Smiths (and subsequently re-released as one album), it's arguably his best stuff. A great big slab of rainy mope-rock, drawing from the Smiths, Lloyd Cole, Radiohead, Jeff Buckley along with nuggets of 'country goodness', the playing and songwriting on this album (or EPs) is terrific. Too many highlights to list, his singing ranges from angsty, to regret, to resignation and finally redemption. It's not all great, the Oasis cover, Wonderwall, gets tiring after a while, and the Purple Rain inspired Hotel Chelsea Nights is a little much but all the rest is really good. Some of the songs seem quite ordinary at first (This House Is Not For Sale, World War 24, City Rain,City Streets) but slowly reveal themselves to be charming strum-alongs. On ballads like My Blue Manhattan and I See Monsters he is on top form. He seems at his best when he doesn't sound like he's trying too hard (Gold, Rock N Roll).

But the story doesn't stop there. A year later (2005) he released 2 country-rock collections (Cold Roses and Jacksonville City Night). To my ears, these seemed like a deliberate return to his country roots. Far better was the 3rd (!) album he released that year, 29. Billed as one song for each of his 20s, it was back to his more singer-songwriter type songs. Apart from the chug-along title track, the album contains some of his most sensitive songs (Night Birds) and some more effortless country (Carolina Rain).

Since then he has concentrated on his work with his band, the Cardinals. My previous post will tell you I'm not so fond of them. Easy Tiger had it's moments though, mostly the more acoustic ballads, though it and the follow-up Cardinology seemed like a triumph of craft over art. It's very MOR to my ears. I don't relish him churning out album after album of this kind of 'contented' vaguely country-rock, so here's hoping he'll lose the plot again with another glorious experiment.