Ryan Adams is a hell of a talent. The young singer from Jacksonville, NC may piss you off. He may drink way too much during his concerts. He may want you to believe that he is just an ordinary guy who writes some songs and plays some guitar, but he is more than that. Although maybe not the genius that some people have portrayed him to be, the guy can write songs and, as Love is Hell pt. 2 demonstrates, he still has one of the sweetest voices in the business—when he doesn’t feel like screaming.
Picking up where
Love is Hell pt. 1 left off, the second installment doesn’t disappoint. Once again, we are confronted by the dark and delicate side of Adams, who still has love on his mind. The seven songs included are stark and sometimes maddening; the last minute of “City Rain, City Streets” has enough emotion filled inside to make you shudder. “English Girls Approximately,” a song that cobbles the best moments of
Heartbreaker and
Gold into a little over five minutes, is quite an achievement for Adams. Singing about another failed attempt at love, he desperately cries out in the song’s waning seconds, leaving his soul out to dry. Interestingly enough, the tune was written about Beth Orton, the British songstress who also inspired “You Will Always Be The Same,” another one of Adams’ best efforts. In the end, it kind of makes you wish their relationship had lasted a bit longer. The EP ends with “Hotel Chelsea Nights,” an overproduced “Purple Rain,” which still stands beautiful in its own right, but Adams is still asking the same questions: “How long is it going to be, babe/before I get over you, doll?” And as selfish as it may seem, what makes this disc special is that you can really tell the hurt in his voice when he sings.
Lost Highway (Adams’ record label) didn’t want to release anything off of Love is Hell because they deemed it “too depressing.” What is even more depressing is that we will never know how it would have stood as a full-length album. Now that is hell.
