HELLO: "RYAN ADAMS" & "1984" RYAN ADAMS

"RYAN ADAMS"
RYAN ADAMS
All music and lyrics by Ryan Adams

Personnel:
RYAN ADAMS: Vocals and all guitars
JEREMY STACEY: Drums
BENMONT TENCH: Organ and Piano Weirdness
MIKE VI OLA: All sorts of stuff
TAL WILKENFELD: Bass Guitar

with
JOHNNY DEPP: Guitar on "Kim," Guitar and Vocals on "Feels Like Fire"
MANDY MOORE: Vocals on "Trouble" and "Am I Safe?"

Produced by Ryan Adams
Released September 9, 2014

Welcome back, Mr. Adams!! Welcome back!!!

Since 2001, singer/songwriter Ryan Adams has rapidly ascended to the top heaps of my most favorite musical artists through his seemingly innate and tremendously gifted songwriting skills, superior musicianship, and extraordinary vocals which always feel to be very much of the present but somehow evoke the hazy glow of past musical eras, most notably the AOR radio classic rock and alternative music of 1970's and 1980's. It always has amazed me by how an artist such as Ryan Adams is able to wear his musical influences so proudly upon his sleeves and yet he sounds like no one else other than himself.

What's more, Ryan Adams just possesses a certain Midas touch with songwriting and even record production so that he has found seemingly endless ways to craft songs from a writing standpoint and then perform and record them, all with the standard instrumentation of guitars, bass, drums and minimal keyboards and other accouterments, that every song and every album sounds so sparkling fresh and independent of the albums and songs and bookend each new release. In short, his amalgamation of country, folk, rock, psychedelia, soul, punk rock and alternative (European and American) music is peerless.

Another factor that always compels me to have my jaw propped open in admiration is his prolific nature. Like Prince or Billy Corgan for instance, the wellspring of inspiration does not seem to ever run dry as he has created and released new music at such a speed that it feels as if he is trying to outrun time itself by getting absolutely everything he possibly can out into the world. This includes not only the albums he recorded with his former band Whiskeytown but also his 13 official releases (either solo or with his other former band The Cardinals), and that is not to even mention his plethora of unreleased songs, albums and dashed off internet only releases of punk rock and oddball hip-hop.

But years of punishing his system with alcohol and drug abuse, plus the relentless recording and touring and compounded by the development of Meniere's disease, Ryan Adams pulled the plug on his career for a spell beginning in 2009, placing himself into a self-imposed sabbatical during which he wrote and released two books of poetry, got married to singer Mandy Moore and generally cared for his own health. It seemed more than fitting that the last song on "Cardinology" (released October 28, 2008), the final album he recorded with The Cardinals, was entitled "Stop." And stop he did.

Ryan Adams made a subdued return in 2011 with "Ashes And Fire" (released October 10, 2011), an elegant quiet storm produced by the iconic Glyn Johns, Father of Ethan Johns who collaborated with Adams on his 2001 masterpiece "Gold" (released September 25, 2001). At that time, I wondered if this particular album would be the new beginning for an onslaught of new releases from Adams but it was not to be as three years passed without a peep or any indication that new material was really forthcoming at all, despite the fact that he had been recording new material with Glyn Johns.

So imagine my surprise when Ryan Adams returned to the musical  airwaves this summer with a track that can only be described as killer! The outstanding "Gimmie Something Good" just had it all to my ears. The Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers/Stevie Nicks "Stop Dragging My Heart Around" strut augmented by a passionate vocal with melodies, harmonies and choirboy backing vocals that burst from the speakers and forced me to sign along even though I was hearing the track for the first time. When I subsequently learned that this was to be the first single from a new album, I began salivating for the new release immediately. And I have played "Gimmie Something Good" more than any other single I have heard this year by a long shot.

And now, the new album, simply entitled "Ryan Adams" has arrived and while all of the reviews I have seen have been good to strong, there has been some minor criticism that this new album is not necessarily a great album. Frankly, whether it is or not, to me it is an irrelevant issue because for an artists that was as prolific as Ryan Adams and now that he is returning after being three years away, what more could I possibly wish for than an album that is essentially Adams telling the listener, "Hello"?

"Ryan Adams" is eponymously titled with purpose as this is an album of simultaneous introduction to the uninitiated or a re-introduction to those of us who have loved and missed him for so long. As I have to say it, ad to paraphrase the immortal Peaches and Herb, I have been reunited with Ryan Adams and it feels so good!!

Where "Cardinology" found Ryan Adams at possibly his weariest and "Ashes And Fire" found him to be somewhat cautious, "Ryan Adams" finds our hero completely reinvigorated and rejuvenated. Like Jenny Lewis' new album "The Voyager" (released July 29, 2014), which Adams produced, this 14th album in Ryan Adams' discography also sounds as if it were recorded just down the hall from Fleetwood Mac. Throughout the album, Adams' guitars shimmer and shine, Jeremy Stacey's drums are so dryly fat and thick sounding that you can practically hear the sticks hitting the drum heads, Tal Wilhenfeld's bass playing consistently surprises with its melodicism and propulsive grooves and the album's MVP is unquestionably Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' keyboardist Benmont Tench whose supple organ performances laces every sound together as if on threads of gossamer.

Opening with the aforementioned killer first single "Gimmie Something Good" and continuing with the autumnal howl of a heartbreaker entitled "Kim," "Ryan Adams" is a determined collection of 11 tracks that all concern Adams' trademark themes of love, loss, and all manner of emotional state of turbulence, fragility and even anxiety when you hear a track like "Am I Safe?" or even the pleading "Stay With Me." Yet, these songs are not more of the barfly laments that were characteristic of his earlier material. These songs, which all contain a sheen of strong reverb, all suggest the eternal echoes of memories and regrets.

But, like The Beatles accomplished so heroically through songs like "Help!" for instance, Adams has this ability to take material that smacks of internal desperation and deep pain, hurt, misery and what feels to be so intensely personal, and craft them into something so universal and tuneful that you will be surprised at what exactly you are singing along with as the melodies are so brightly inviting and even comforting. And yet, you can never really feel too comfortable as the emotional turmoil and disorder runs rampant.

Within songs like high flying "Trouble" and the Springsteen-esque "I Just Might," motifs of burning and fire continuously arise. The ghostly yet dazzling mood piece of "Shadows" is like hearing The Smiths covering Fleetwood Mac's "Gold Dust Woman" but with Roy Orbison on lead vocals. Just wait until you hear that track as it is one of the album's many highlights.

But instead of leaving us all within a state of unresolved despair, "Ryan Adams" concludes with two selections which may possibly reflect his own inner journey over the last few years from a place of upheaval to romantic, internal and artistic stability. "Tired Of Giving Up" just may be Adams singing to himself as he intones, "You'e so wild and full of rage/You keep running away," as well as the repeated refrains of "..I'm tired of giving up/And I'm tired of fighting." The album's final track just says it all within the title..."Let Go."

Yet, what always packs a wallop is Ryan Adams grasp of lyrical poetry, which is often so literal and studied and immediately conjures up imagery, either realistic or surreal, within the mind's eye. In the stark and acoustic driven "My Wrecking Ball," Adams delivers a hushed short story or inner monologue that contains the following passage:

"Lying in the bed at night
Feeling like I'm somebody else
My thought inside my head 
Get lost inside the haunted house
Everyone I used to know
Left their dreams by the door
I accidentally kick them
That's how I can tell you're still not sure
If you wanna throw them out at all"

Damn that's good!

Dear readers and listeners, I cannot urge you enough to head out and purchase yourself a copy of Ryan Adams' latest album, a work from an artist who still believes in the album as existing as a piece of art and not as soulless, disposable product designed to be consumed and ejected as quickly as possible. The album "Ryan Adams" gives you the on-going work of an artist whose passion with writing and playing music is evident within every single sound that you hear, and his devotion to his chosen art is a sacred as it is playfully energetic.

Welcome back, Mr. Adams!!! I just cannot say it enough. Welcome back!!!

"1984"

RYAN ADAMS
All music, lyrics, vocals and instruments by Ryan Adams

Produced by Ryan Adams

Released August 19, 2014

No, Ryan Adams has not decided to remake the classic Van Halen album but what he has accomplished with this digital and vinyl only EP is to re-create the energy and violently vibrant sounds and energy of the punk rock music that existed within the titular year. With 11 songs and a running time of only 15 minutes, Ryan Adams delivers an exuberant collection that sounds remarkably like his teen age self throwing himself hither and tither around his bedroom when Mom and Dad are out for the night. 

So authentic this low-fi production is, that "1984" feels as if it needs to be listened to on an old ratty cassette on an equally ratty boom box adorned with stickers celebrating Husker Du, The Cramps and The Misfits. Yet, Ryan Adams being Ryan Adams, the melodies and harmonics always slice through the frenzied sonic hurricane making for an experience that is as tuneful as it is relentless.