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By Dennis Cook
This is just plain good - one solid song after another, full of crusty-eyed wisdom and weather-beaten spirit. These are the lessons gleaned at dawn after no sleep and a head full of conjecture. With his second strong album this year, Ryan Adams shows that he might be hitting his true stride in this bracing marriage of Nashville croon and American Beauty.
It’s no great stretch to say Adams thinks too much. There’s such a cry for peace in his recent work with his new band, The Cardinals. And it seems, after nearly a dozen releases, he may have finally found a spot to rest his weary head. Channeling both the steel rail drive of ’60s Merle Haggard and early ‘70s Jerry Garcia, this latest incarnation for the chameleon-like Adams feels right. Never a member of his fan club prior to Cold Roses and the occasional Whiskeytown tune, there’s been an inexorable pull to his work for me lately. I honestly tried to resist because there’s a cult-of-personality taint to Adams that doesn’t sit well. It’s similar to the aura surrounding Wilco, where genius is always assumed and any criticism is met with scorn. So, what’s different now?
There’s a hearty interaction with the Cardinals. For just a second outing, this feels increasingly like an actual band and not just pick-up players for Adams’s wandering whims. But more than that, the man himself sounds more cohesive, the words tumbling out in a way that speaks back and forth across the grooves. Redemption, personal failure, the itch for a fine time, and a sad, reflective eye on love all play into Jacksonville and its predecessor, Cold Roses. There’s also a third Cardinals album planned for release by December. That may seem prolific, but during rock’s first blush in the ‘50s and ‘60s, artists routinely put out the same. It was what you did, and Adams may have the makings of such a classic in him. His dedication and work ethic are unimpeachable, and it’s hard not to be bowled over by it. He’s clearly blessed with natural talent, but it still takes something to harness that onto tracks you can share with the world.
He does hurt so well, crawling inside slow songs like a lover we half remember. “Dear John” is the second best thing he’s ever penned, right after Roses’ “Magnolia Mountain.” Each wrestles with big ideas and pins them to the mat of real human experience. You can revisit them and always find some new nugget of truth if you open yourself as wide as Adams. That quality of emotional verisimilitude permeates Jacksonville.
Especially bright are the Rickie Lee Jones-like backing vocals of Catherine Popper, which also recall Nicolette Larson’s gorgeous stint with Neil Young or Emmylou Harris’s singing with Dylan on Desire, rather than her better-known time with Gram Parsons. In fact, though some earlier Ryan Adams tracks carried Parsons’s fingerprints, this new batch is remarkably free of familiar country-rock mannerisms. Some of it twangs, some of it soars (with a Celtic lilt even on “Peaceful Valley”), some of it trucks like an 18-wheeler on open highway, and some of it just sways, slow and uneasy. His facility with multiple styles is impressive throughout. There is a lot of real pain being excised in these verses, and the forms he uses to present his thoughts today feel far less derivative than in the past. In short, brother man seems to have found his voice.
There’s no telling if it’s gonna last. Adams might have a roots reggae band by next year for all we know. I hope not. You should, too. Because the beginning of the arc visible on his latest is the kind that goes higher than we can easily imagine. Neither Jacksonville nor Cold Roses are classics, but the new one is clunker-free and focused in a way that suggests his tomorrow is gonna be something special.
JamBase | California
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