Front Page Reviews & AIR

As a long-time Ryan Adams fan – from all the way back to the days of his old band Whiskeytown – my response to his latest album has been surprisingly conflicted.  Over his 11-year solo career, Adams has been nothing if not prolific, releasing 10 albums between 2000 and 2008 (three in 2005 alone, one of them the double-LP Cold Roses).  As a fan, I got used to the fact that an artist putting out so many songs was necessarily going to be inconsistent.  Amid his gems (which are some of the best songs of the last decade), there have always been a number of head-scratchers and songs that seemed “mailed in”.  Only two of his albums – Heartbreaker, his 2000 debut, and Cold Roses – struck me as fully realized, and both were masterpieces.  What made Adams so frustrating was the same thing that made him compelling – his restlessness. 

After gaining critical acclaim with the Dylan-esque acoustic/folky Heartbreaker, he shifted gears to play the classic rock star on Gold (2001), which included obvious homages to The Who and The Rolling Stones, among others, and brought Adams some commercial success.  Rock and Roll (2003) instead paid tribute to the post-punk, indie and alternative music that Adams obviously grew up on.  And so on and so forth as Adams echoed the likes of Elliot Smith, Elton John, The Grateful Dead, Merle Haggard, and whatever he was going for on 29.  The point is that if Adams had let himself be pigeonholed into a singer/songwriter box, we might have been spared some of his sub-par work, but we also would have lost out on some of his best.  There wouldn’t be the anthemic “So Alive”, the strange, brooding-to-beautiful “The Shadowlands”, or maybe even the best song Jerry Garcia never wrote, “Magnolia Mountain”. 

All this began to change with 2007’s Easy Tiger.  After rumors circled about rehab, Adams admitted that he had had problems with drugs and alcohol that ended in 2006.  Many fans cited his clean living as the reason for the tameness of Tiger (sorry), but it was true that the edges were definitely smoother.  The album even had a hit (“Two”) that featured Sheryl Crow in a duet.  After releasing one more uneven album with the Cardinals (his backing band since Cold Roses) in 2008, Adams married actress/singer Mandy Moore and said he was retiring to write books.  Over the last couple years, Adams has limitedly released a metal album (Orion, vinyl only) and a collection of high-octane rock outtakes from the Cardinals’ sessions in 2006, called Cardinals III/IV.  For the first time in his career, he had some time off.  He kicked the drugs and alcohol, got married, settled down, and didn’t even play a show for a year and a half.  Eventually, though, Ryan Adams was ready to make his return.  That is how Ashes & Fire has been billed, and Adams doesn’t seem to mind.  Having had plenty of time for refocusing, Ashes seemed to promise a lot.  Because so much of Adams’ work seemed shrugged-off, half-trying, I had always wondered what he could do if he really tried.

In this context, it was hard for me not to be disappointed by Ashes.  But it’s a conflicted sort of disappointment.  The truth is that Adams is trying harder than he ever has.  There’s so much obvious care put into this album that it’s impossible not to find it endearing, especially from a guy who used to play shows shit-faced and turn his back on his audience.  The love songs are cheesier than ever (“I Love You But I Don’t Know What to Say”), but they’re so sincere.  It’s hard not to just be happy for the guy for getting it together and finding some peace.  And it’s impossible not to like songs like “Dirty Rain”, the title track, and “Lucky Now”; they would fit comfortably on any Ryan Adams album.  You’d have to say Ashes & Fire is his most focused and consistently listenable album in six years, but…there’s something missing. 

Considering so many of his best songs were about desperation, heartbreak, and hard living, it might not be surprising that Ashes & Fire carries none of the emotional extremes of Adams’ previous work.  That trademark restlessness is gone.  The result is something that, while endearing, is very safe sounding.  The production is handled by Glyn Johns, the legendary 70s rock producer whose son, Ethan, produced many of Adams’ previous albums.  The consistently acoustic sound of Ashes, while well-executed, sounds like it belongs among those quintessential laid-back L.A. albums that Asylum was releasing in the early 70s, next to Jackson Browne and the Eagles (Johns produced the latter’s first three albums), which is not necessarily a bad thing.  But it’s certainly not dangerous. 

I’m pretty sure that side of Ryan Adams  is gone (let’s hope so for his sake).  But before we mourn the passing of “Ryan Adams the drunk junkie,” it’s worth remembering that that path was already going downhill, running its course, burning itself out.  It’s possible that his re-invention as the safe singer/songwriter (that so many always wanted him to be anyway) may signal a creative rebirth as well.  It’s possible for peace, love and family to lead to wisdom, compassion and understanding, even joy.  And I’m sure someone as talented as Ryan Adams can find a way to express those things as powerfully as he has expressed sadness and heartbreak.  The broken, but hopeful, opening (and closing) to “Lucky Now” is a great start:

I don’t remember, were we wild and young?

All that’s faded into memory

I feel like somebody I don’t know

Are we really who we used to be?

Am I really who I was?