CD REVIEW: Ryan Adams "29"

No one sets the bar higher for Ryan Adams than himself. From May 5 to December 20 of 2005, the 30 year-old North Carolina native and former Whiskeytown frontman released 41 new tracks on three different albums, and the collected works form a catalogue that dwarfs nearly every other release from last year.

Frequently hailed as the stagecoach driver of alt.country, Adams is the current frontrunner of the genre, as Jeff Tweedy and Wilco have veered off the trail into fragmented fields of noise, the Jayhawks have disbanded altogether, and Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes too often rides sidesaddle, dabbling equally in bluegrass banter and electronic bombast. As a versatile songwriter, Adams can be either meticulous or spontaneous, confident or self-pitying, aloofly misanthropic or hopelessly romantic. And he sounds genuine regardless of the subject matter.

Adams’s first release of 2005, the atmospheric Cold Roses, is an 18-track rhapsody harkening back to the days of roots-rock country music, a time when pastoral psalms were the voice of rural America more than they were commercial means to sell dip and Chevies. Jacksonville City Nights arrived soon after Cold Roses. Jacksonville is a honky tonk whirlwind of love songs and, arguably, the most daring Ryan Adams album to date. Combining the harmonies and language of old gospel tunes with the scofflaw of southern twang, Jacksonville is a mountain range with too many peaks to nominate one as the highest. Notable tracks are “Dear John,” a tearful duet with Norah Jones, “Peaceful Valley,” the most bizarrely belted Ryan Adams song to date, and “My Heart is Broken,” which, for all intensive purposes, could be a reworked Tammy Wynette tune.

Whereas Cold Roses and Jacksonville City Nights are steady and purposeful - collages of Roy Orbison, Merle Haggard, and the riffiness of the Grateful Dead - Adams’s newest collection, 29 (released December 20), is essentially a pop effort. 29 is Adams’s first solo production since joining forces with the Cardinals, and at times the album falters. That being said, the songwriting on 29 is most similar to the lesser appreciated Love Is Hell collection, and the album is best appreciated as a literary work. .

According to Adams, each track on 29 chronicles a year in his 20s. While the autobiographical concept may beg critiques of pretentiousness, Adams, as a character within the framework of the album itself, rarely imposes upon the other personages in the harmonics. Adams is skating on thin ice here, but the songs on 29 are personal revelations without being narcissistic indulgences. 29 - genuine, simple, and heartfelt - is simply a lyrical novel spanning 10 years

The title track “29” is an inebriated ramble up and down lonely highways littered with poorly lit poolhalls and boredom. “Strawberry Wine,” a sad, strummy hum-a-long, is about the pendulous swing of tragic characters swaying between poles of regret and failure. Hushy piano tracks like “Starlite Diner” and “Blue Sky Blues” are so well-told one has a hard time deciding if they are songs with plots or stories wrapped in blankets of sound.

The breakaway track on 29 is “The Sadness,” which has a sound unlike anything Adams has ever composed. Combining sounds from paso doble and flamenco, the song likens itself to a bullfight, and with Adams as the matador battling the minatory Love it’s unclear who will be claimed the victor. Like “Peaceful Valley” on Jacksonville City Nights, Adams’s voice on “The Sadness” exhibits a capricious elasticity not attempted on earlier works like Gold or RockNRoll.

Adams’s new era could be defined, albeit ironically, by his handicap. After a fall during a 2004 Liverpool concert resulted in a broken wrist, Adams was told he may never play guitar again. Several operations later and months of having to relearn the guitar, Cold Roses, Jacksonville City Nights, and 29 exhibit a different breed of songwriting. From his new relationship with the six string, Adams seems to have also found new pain in his voice, a new foothold in the market, and new ways of convincing the listener to believe each chorus and every refrain.

If 2006 is as good to Adams as 2005 was, other artists may have to rethink the strategy of a releasing an album every two or three years, lest they be left in dust of Ryan Adams as he passes them by in a rusty pickup traveling much faster than it should.

The above originally appeared in a slightly altered form in Crosswinds Weekly, Jan. 4 - Jan. 11.