Friday music blogging: Ryan Adams

Have an alt country weekend 4

Listen
Play "Tears of Gold" by Ryan Adams:

I wasn't much into the alt country thing until I met my wife. I'm still not the huge fan she is, but I've found a lot of stuff in the vicinity I enjoy. By far the biggest discovery for me was Whiskeytown, which made some flawless, classic albums back in the '90s. (Get Faithless Street and Strangers Almanac, you won't be sorry.)

After he went solo, Whiskeytown singer/songwriter Ryan Adams embarked on a slow descent. His first, Heartbreaker, was great, even a rival to the band's material. Then Gold was less good, and more bloated, and from then on the albums just got way too frequent and way too uneven. Adams' drunkenness and erratic behavior didn't inspire confidence.

Anyhoo, I'm happy to report that Adams' latest, Easy Tiger, is his best in years, by a wide margin. He seems to have calmed down some, spent some more time on the songs, and gotten some steadiness and strength from his backing band the Cardinals.

This is track six, "Tears of Gold."

David Roberts is staff writer for Grist. You can follow his Twitter feed at twitter.com/drgrist.

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  1. meander Posted 2:34 am
    27 Oct 2007

    Cary onWhiskeytown alum Caitlin Cary teamed up with Thad Cockrell to make the mostly great Begonias a few years ago.  Their songs have old school country instrumentation with classical country lyrics about heartbreak and bad luck.  The album page at Yeproc Records has a sample track to stream, and I'm pretty sure that one of the album tracks can be legally downloaded from somewhere on the web (I can't remember where).



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    meander

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  2. rustedrizzoot Posted 12:23 pm
    27 Oct 2007

    Follow The LightsIf you like Ryan and The Cardinals - pickup Follow The Lights - their new EP came out this past week.  Its a solid choice.

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  3. caniscandida Posted 2:37 am
    28 Oct 2007

    "alt country"This is pretty soporific.  The voice is uncertain and undisciplined.  The melody lacks energy, and cyclically leaves us as for dead.  And yet, this is "Adams' best in years, by a wide margin"?
    Not that I am a connoisseur.  The only country-related stuff that I listen to is bluegrass/folk, of the sort that is classically represented by Emmylou Harris, and more recently by Alison Krauss; also, the archeological sounds heard in the musical soundtracks of "O Brother, Where Art Thou?," and "Cold Mountain," in both of which Krauss participated.
    But I like very much the 2001 album "Buddy and Julie Miller," plenty raw and sweet alike.  Their pal Emmylou sings back-up on the fourth track.
    In principle, "alt country" as a category should be able to include all kinds of people, such as the Dixie Chicks (not my favorite listening, but they are excellent musicians, with a few very good songs, plus politically they are absolutely OK by me), Cowboy Junkies (Canadian geniuses, with a sui-generis sound), and even Neil Young (Canadian-American treasure-genius, quite sui generis, up there with the Beatles, the Stones and Dylan among Greatest New Talents of the 1960s).

    Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.

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  4. Smaug Posted 10:49 am
    28 Oct 2007

    alt-country: three wordsThe Old 97's
    (But Ryan Adams is pretty good too.  Also: Slobberbone and their successors the Drams.)

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