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this is it: ryan adams' latest

I had this standing Ryan Adams debate with someone I once loved. I will cop to the fact that it was his influence that got me to pay serious attention to Ryan's work, something I'd stupidly neglected to do, letting the reputation overshadow the actual music.

Our ongoing discussion ran fairly consistently along the following lines: I admired Ryan's sheer volume of output, simply because he wasn't standing still, he was always creating, and it wasn't all crap. His point was that "more" didn't necessarily equal "better," and that Ryan tended to value "new" over "good". He also felt that Ryan didn't have good filters - exhibit #1, the version of "Dear Chicago" that made it onto Demolition is decidedly inferior from the original demo - and I wholeheartedly agree on that point. (And in case you're going to ask, the demo's floating around the net if you decide to go look for it.)

Because I came to embrace Ryan's work so far along in the story, I think that I may have just a greater patience (or maybe it's just indulgence) of much of what can irritate (and amuse) fans of RA. While my former associate, who was around from Whiskeytown days, had far less tolerance for what he felt was a lack of focus and quality.

I don't know what made me decide that I was in it for the long run with Ryan; I think the show I saw at the Moore in October of 03 was a big part of it, for sure. Moody and plaintive, emotional, almost fragile. Moving from piano to guitar and back, stage half dark, half blue, that beautiful voice echoing through the theater. Even when I hated the attitude, I gave props to the instrument. You held your breath the whole time. I was gone. Then, Heartbreaker became an almost pathetic soundtrack for my life last year, when I'd lie on the couch in the dark and listen to the record over and over and over on endless repeat, trying to fight my way through desperately aching disappointment and regret. That's the aural equivalent of getting a tattoo.

So now we come to the new releases, LLORNKCOR [it's rocknroll backwards] and Love Is Hell, Pt. I. I suppose I could be Good Reviewer and give you the background and the history, but you can go read just about any magazine right now to get all of that.

I had the New York version of LIH (there's two sessions, NY and New Orleans; the official releases will be a mix of both sessions) and RNR earlier this summer. I confess that I had issues with LIH at first, but I think that was an issue with emotional resonance. If you are currently subscribing to the theory espoused by the title of the record, it isn't exactly going to be your favorite thing to hear. But now, even with it being not a fully formed concept (in my opinion, anyway - at best it's a compromise between Ryan's vision and his record label), I think it's beautiful.

I *loved* "So Alive". Just adored it. I mean, I didn't want to, but after three listens, I just couldn't help it. The album, though... I didn't hate it, and I can't even say it wasn't what I was expecting, because I had no real expectations. Well, that's not true - to be honest, I expected it to sound rawer and crunchier than it is. I would have liked a BIG GUITAR album from Ryan. Or a thrashy punk record (I guess that's The Finger, but I just can't take that seriously).

So I listened to it and then I put it away until the official release date. That night, despite myself, and despite working until 11pm, I found myself tearing over to Easy Street on the way home in desperate search of. Yeah, I had RNR, but until I held the official release in my hand, I had no idea if what I had was real or not. And I didn’t have LIH – half of it, sure, but unfinished. I came home, and breathlessly threw on RNR. Yeah, same record that got passed to me under the table. It still didn’t click. It just didn’t. But I had LIH so I was okay. Finally, the New Orleans sessions, which live up to their reputation (Ryan referring to NOLA as a place you go to “to drink and die”). That’s a windswept November album if I ever heard one. Candles, a dark room, and the wind blowing frantically outside. Desperate, desolate, melancholy. Not perfect, but enough tiny jewels glinting through.

But then, after I’d written it off – RNR started to haunt me. Songs, lines, choruses, would stick in my head. I'd be going through the pile of CDs in front of the stereo, or clicking through the iPod, and something would make me go back to RNR.

It's not easy to write this kind of quasi-mainstream stuff, you know? I mean, people do it, and the radio plays it, but most of what's on commercial radio today makes me scream in agony after about the first 30 seconds. Yes, this record is derivative. But it's unapologetically derivative, and it's mixed together in this crazy way that could probably only come out of Ryan. I mean, a song that sounds like Cheap Trick *and* TRex (“Shallow”)? Does it really surprise anyone that he finally sat down and wrote some songs that sound like Oasis (“The Drugs Not Working”) or the Smiths (“Anybody Wanna Take Me Home,” probably the least successful homage) or the Cure (“Boys”)? Ryan's always worn his influences on his sleeve (or tattooed on his arm), and personally, I'm actually surprised that it took him this long to let himself just go for it, have fun, see if he could do it.

I know that most of Ryan's fans think it's unmitigated crap. Amateur, immature, simplistic. But you know what? I think that's precisely what it's meant to be. At this point, Ryan could get just about anyone to play with him, and he deliberately chose this path. Someone criticized it as not being "sincere," but I think that's utter bullshit. It's ain’t fuckin Dashboard Confessional (bleah), but I think it's plenty sincere, because I believe that it's true to where Ryan is right now. Unfortunately (or fortunately), he’s just not living up to a lot of people’s expectations about where he should be at this moment.

I'm kind of curious about the concept of loyalty in fandom today. I mean, I have never taken a record than anything more than, this is what this artist has to say right now. It may not interest me. That doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with the artist or the music, or even that there's anything wrong with me - it's just how art is. If I don’t like an album or a song or a tour, or don’t resonate with it, I’m not going to automatically abandon that artist.

RNR is decidedly not product. It's not carefully designed (and before you point to the interviews where Lost Highway talks about wanting a "single," I somehow do not think that RNR was exactly the answer to their prayers) - it just IS. It's not a final statement, but it's a statement about right now. If you read any of the interviews Ryan’s done around the release of the album, RNR should not surprise anyone. He was tired of music, he was burned out, talking about leaving music (the original announcement of the 7/4 Battery Park show was billed as his “farewell” show). If you felt like that, wouldn’t you just want to go into someone’s basement and just crank out something raw and basic and not too complicated?

I keep having this argument everywhere I turn, and now I'm done. It works for me. Trust me, I decidedly do not love all of it, but I don’t hate any of it. The best songs – “RNR,” “1974” and “So Alive” (at least in my opinion, your mileage will definitely vary) – kick ass for what they are. Not as compared to “16 Days” or “Nobody Girl” or “Oh My Sweet Carolina”, but, again, for what they are. I don't know that I'll listen to it in 20 years but I’m not sure I’m going to listen to the Datsuns or even The Minus 5 vs. Wilco - but does that make those records necessarily bad? I don’t think so. If every record Ryan makes from here on out is just like RNR, and we don't get any more flashes of brilliance (and for that, I'll still point you in the direction of LIH) -- then, come talk to me. I'll be waiting.

It comes down to this: some of the songs make me hurt, some make me wince, some make me cry, some make me smile and some make me sing. More than anything, they make me want to be able to open chapter 345 of the endless Ryan debate with the aforementioned third party. But that's gone, in the type of sad decline and exploding disintegration that's told over and over in Ryan's songs. Because heartbreak is still universal and lost love, to paraphrase something I read once, is what makes the jukebox play forever.

They make me feel. And no matter what these records are or aren't, or what they could or might be, that one fact alone is hardly insignificant.

Posted by clr at November 16, 2003 11:16 PM | TrackBack