Ryan Adams

If you’re still on the fence about buying the new Ryan Adams record, let me help you sort through some of your possible concerns. I’m guessing you’re scared because his last effort, Rock N Roll, probably wasn’t what you expected, prompting you to sell it on Ebay for $6.99 plus shipping. It was a screaming fit of a record, with Adams yelling most of the time about girls, drugs, burning photographs, and doing Miss America. It sounded nothing like your Ryan Adams, the one who wrote songs such as “New York, New York” or “Oh My Sweet Carolina.”

I hate to break it you, but it’s quite possible your Ryan Adams doesn’t really exist.

Or maybe he just doesn’t exist at your convenience. For example, Adams is the type who, during his concerts, will get on your last nerve with his drunken antics and persistence to perform songs that he wrote 15 minutes before the show. You came to hear crisp, sweet performances and he came to party. But just before you give up and reach for your jacket to leave, your Ryan Adams appears, fragile and sincere, making you realize why you came to see him in the first place. A difficult artist, but somehow always well worth the price of admission, even if you only got 20 or 30 minutes of what you really came for.

This is the kind of Ryan Adams who appears on Cold Roses—a talented artist hard to figure out but impossible to deny. Appearing with his new band The Cardinals, Adams gives us a natural, sporadic effort—one that lasts 18 songs over two discs. He’s dropped the 80’s guitar riffs that were featured on Rock N Roll and added the wizardry of Cindy Cashdollar’s lap steel—one of many changes you’ll probably drool over. And although there is a lot to get excited about on Cold Roses, there is also a lot of give and take.

In all probability, the songs that I think are clunkers (“Blossom” and “Beautiful Sorta”) are probably the ones you’ll enjoy the most. That’s probably Adams’ idea—to put enough material out there so that everyone comes away happy. But for every complete gem (“Easy Plateau”), there is a tune that seems unfinished (“Rosebud”). And for every beautiful line in “How Do You Keep Love Alive” there is a lazy one riding around the corner in “Cherry Lane,” like when he sings “but that shit just fucks you up.” It’s as if all of a sudden Adams forgot how to cuss naturally in a song, something he did marvelously on Heartbreaker’s “Come Pick Me Up.” He’s too much of a talent to force anything, in my opinion.

Perhaps I am being too harsh. It could be that this is a fine case of the good outweighing the bad—so much that you don’t mind skipping a song or two. I’ll agree that it his best effort since Gold, but I shiver at the thought of the truth that he sings of in “If I am a Stranger.” That is, if you don’t know Adams by now, you will never, ever get to know him. And that’s just too bad.