Ryan Adams Shows His Age

Ryan Adams Shows His Age

By Jake Tully

It’s been quite some time since Ryan Adams has released an album so evidently helmed with his own creative license. It’s no surprise that Adams is a far superior producer of content when making music on his own terms, but this time it’s transformative. Ryan Adams is the record that blatantly ages Adams as a singer-songwriter, but in perhaps the best possible fashion. Fifteen years after Heartbreaker and staring into the empty whiskey glass of 40, Adams shows his duality – the punk that so badly wants to drown us in electric bliss but can’t quite reach the top of the Marshall stack, and the Bryan Adams sound-alike he has been escaping since the days of Whiskeytown.

It seems wholly unfair to peg Adams as any amalgam of contemporary, the agreed upon kiss of death for anyone who had a modicum of respect at any point in their career. While Adams is far and away from banality, one can’t listen to Ryan Adams and help but hear the recent Tom Petty and Springsteen permeating into his consciousness. It’s safe to say that Adams has never sounded more akin to Jackson Browne, but boy, does it oddly work.

One of the most puzzling aspects of Adams’ newest record is how greatly he professed his excitement of the return to his electric guitar. Aside from “Feels Like Fire” and “Stay With Me,” one would be hard pressed to find much expansive guitar work from the slinger who once slung with such fervor that you’d forget you were listening to the guy who championed a cover of “Wonderwall.” This reviewer would posit that the instrumentation itself is done quite well; the guitar work just seems to take a back seat to emphasize the overall craft.

A spin of Ryan Adams is tantamount to listening to a rocker audibly age right before you. It’s not often you come across an album so transformative to an image or a sound – and there inlies it’s greatness.

Generally, it seems as though you’re handed a bill of sale when listening to a rebellious young-un enter his 40’s that reads, “Don’t count on any of that rule-breaking shit. I’m here for ten tracks and if one’s close to 20 years ago, it’ll be a surprise.” In other words, you can almost entirely hear the sea change in sound after a hiatus, and more often than not it’s an underwhelming experience.

Ryan Adams is wholly different. It’s perhaps one of the most graduated shifts in style over the course of 12 tracks this reviewer has heard to date. Easing you into what is likely going to be de rigeur of the Tarheel from here on out. Moreover, it’s unfair to expect a follow-up to Gold at this point in the game. If Jackson Browne and Stephen Stills Adams gives us, then Browne and Stills we shall receive – and we should feel damn lucky, too.

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