If anything, you've got to give singer/songwriter Ryan Adams credit for his chutzpah.
He doesn't care if people buy his records. He couldn't care less if critics savage his records. He kicks people out of his concerts if they ask him to play songs by Bryan Adams, an '80s rock singer known for his hit “Summer of '69.”
Ryan is a sensitive songwriter with a punk-rock attitude, a scruffy guy from North Carolina who was in one of the best bands of the '90s, alt-country heroes Whiskeytown, a group he disbanded in 2000 out of boredom and wanting to go solo, and he's done so with a vengeance, putting out albums at an extraordinary pace.
In Adams' worldview, there is no such thing as oversaturation of the music market, and his muse has been on steroids lately. As a result, by Christmas the prolific tunesmith will have released three albums in one calendar year, one of which, “Cold Roses,” was a two-disc set that came out in May.
With this year's barrage of albums, Adams, who has been criticized in the past for uneven work, runs the risk of doing serious damage to his reputation as one of the best songwriters of his generation.
Three albums in 2005! What kind of ego trip, you might ask, is this guy on? Who does he think he is — Bob Dylan — most Adams fans are fond of calling him the “next Bob Dylan” — able to whip out a few brilliant albums a year?
I've heard Bob Dylan, love Bob Dylan, and as much as he's influenced by him, Ryan Adams is no Bob Dylan.
Nobody is Bob Dylan (even Bob Dylan used to be Bob Dylan), and there will never be another Dylan, but so far in 2005, with “Cold Roses” and the just-released “Jacksonville City Nights,” Adams, only 30, is making the best music of his career, and that's saying something. He's not the next Dylan, he's the first Ryan Adams, and Ryan Adams is pretty damn good.
Since his first solo album, the Americana classic “Heartbreaker,” the singer/songwriter had been adrift, putting out a deluge of work that has frustrated fans with a mix of brilliance and mediocrity. If Adams had concentrated on one great album instead of three hit-and-miss records, he might really be the next Dylan.
But 2005 has seen Adams shift his hyperactive creativity into overdrive, settling back into his comfortable alt-country “Whiskeytown” guise and writing the strongest songs of his career.
Adams' “Cold Roses” is the singer/songwriter channeling Jerry Garcia, with dreamy acoustic/electric country-rock tunes taking a cue from the best of the Grateful Dead (“Rosebud” sounds like it could have been written by Garcia himself), and darn near all of the 18 songs, especially standouts such as the achingly beautiful “Magnolia Mountain,” the delicate, Elliott Smith-esque “Meadowlake Street” and the breezy road anthem “Ley it Ride” hit the bull's-eye.
It was merely a prelude, however, to the new “Jacksonville City Nights,” which is Adams' best work since Whiskeytown's “Stranger's Almanac.”
This is Adams' first straight-ahead country album, dispensing of the “alt” and delivering a record that the late, great Gram Parsons would be proud of.
Like “Cold Roses,” the record is an acoustic based album, but “Jacksonville City Nights” is buttressed by true-country instrumentation — weeping pedal steel and honky-tonk fiddle. Tunes such as “A Kiss Before I Go” and “My Heart Is Broken” sound like classic '60s honky-tonk. The lead single “The Hardest Part” (if any radio station will play it) might be the prettiest song Adams has ever written — romantic, melancholy and yet somehow uplifting.
Adams' December release, “29,” is reportedly a “story song” album, with nine tunes all clocking in at more than nine minutes.
