by Morgan Clendaniel

Ryan Adams, Cold Roses


Whatever you think of Ryan Adams, it's time to admit a few things. Since Whiskeytown's Faithless Street in 1996, Adams has created a body of work that is impressive not only for its sheer magnitude, but also for the lack of sucking that one would assume would accompany so much output.

In the nine years since his debut, Adams first re-defined post-Tupelo alt-country over the course of three Whiskeytown albums. That would be nine year's worth of work for most artists. But that's not all. He has also released: an almost flawless solo debut, an out-of-nowhere explosion of rock anthems, a disparate collection of unreleased tracks, two EPs worth of Smith's-ish melancholia, a Replacements-Strokes hybrid, and now a new double album. This leaves out the two solo albums to be released later this year as well as the myriad songs that Adams writes and never releases (including a near-legendary bluesy cover of the Strokes' entire first album).

With the exception of Heartbreaker, almost all of Adams' solo efforts are, on some level, flawed. But, what is remarkable is that none are bad. Working at the almost inhuman pace of close to an album a year, Adams has never turned out bad product. And, more importantly, with each album, he manages to write a few of the best songs that anyone will hear until the next Ryan Adams record comes out.

For all of Adams' past albums, the question has been: who is editing this thing? Clearly, writing good songs is not a problem for Ryan. Apparently, brilliant pop songs just flow out as soon as he picks up the guitar. But, in a shocking display of normalcy, some of his songs are not so brilliant. This really shouldn't be a problem to admit, especially if, between the bad songs, you just wrote four amazing ones. But, Adams just throws them all on the album. So, between the glorious bursts of creativity, you have to slog through some less compelling material. But, this is a complaint that has been voiced in almost every piece of Adams-related reportage since Gold; clearly, the shrill voices of the music journalism establishment haven't managed to substantially alter Adams' song selection process, so it's probably time to drop it.

The first impulse on hearing this massive, 78-minute album, is to have the standard reaction: with a little more aggressiveness at the cutting board, Adams could have just released a truly exceptional album with no filler whatsoever. And, if you do the math, there are eighteen songs, and five of them are not at the level set by the other thirteen. Thirteen sounds just about right for a rocking new album, huh? But, say that you just wrote thirteen awesome songs, and five songs that are better than most of the crap you hear most of the time. You'd probably just throw those on, too. The man has some hubris. You can make a pretty valid argument that he deserves it.

Regardless, Cold Roses is, by far, Adams strongest effort since Heartbreaker. Adams re-embraces some of the best aspects of the classic rock bombast of Gold, while further developing the interesting, almost Jeff Buckley-like baroque sounds he started to develop on the Love Is Hell EPs. More importantly, many of the songs are washed with beautiful pedal steel that marks an exciting return to some sort of country inspiration.

The first disc features an exciting spectrum of influences and styles, from the somber "Meadowlake Street," to the rocking "Beautiful Sorta" and the psuedo-power-punk of "Cherry Lane." These songs are pretty damn compelling. Even when Adams gets all weepy, in a way which brought down the Love Is Hell EPs, the band picks him up, and gives the songs enough life to remain interesting. While the second disc is burdened by the bulk of the sub-par songs, it also features the best three songs on Cold Roses. "Let It Ride" features a return to the nonsensical Americana-isms that could sound beyond hackneyed, but which Adams inevitably makes sound incredibly sincere, in spite of both their lack of obvious meaning and their quaint country-shtick. I don't know what "Tennessee is a brother to my sister Carolina" means. I'm guessing Adams doesn't either. Somehow, it's still a great line. "If I Am A Stranger" and "Life Is Beautiful" round out a trifecta of brilliance.

Cold Roses should, hopefully, reverse the bad feelings that many have held after any number of Adams perceived musical and stylistic offenses. No album can be perfect. It's not Adams fault that he came closest on his first try, establishing a nearly impossible standard. Let's just accept that this man is writing some of the finest songs around. No matter how many less-good songs they are buried in, they're still near perfect pop songs (check out "Hotel Chelsea Nights," "Dear Chicago," or "Rock N Roll" from the post-Heartbreaker back catalog for some prime examples). And now, with Cold Roses, he's made another album that is completely worthy of his songs - give or take.

Labels: Ryan Adams