Ryan Adams
Easy Tiger
Lost Highway Records
By Mike Randall
Whether attempting to be a Deadhead (Cold Roses), pop star (Gold), downtown punk (Rock and Roll) or legitimate purveyor of traditional country music (Jacksonville City Nights), it’s unclear whether Ryan Adams has tried to make obvious his impressive level of prolificacy or whether he’s simply segmenting his appeal with each release. Fortunately, with Easy Tiger, he’s gone back to the front-porch styling of Heartbreaker, the album that gave him the credibility to make whatever kind of record he wants.
Relaxed, gentle country-rock fills much of the album, as Adams is backed once again by his tremendous band, The Cardinals. “Tears of Gold” would have fit perfectly as one of the highlights on Jacksonville, while tracks such as “Everybody Knows”, “Two” and “These Girls” find Adams at his most restrained, a word not typically associated with the former Whiskeytown-er.
Adams has traditionally been most effective when he’s at his most melancholic, which is evident during the Neil Young-esque “I Taught Myself How to Grow Old” and the soulful “The Sun Also Sets,” which finds Adams singing, “Sit down and write me a letter/When you’re feeling better/Drop me a line/I wanna know how it all works out/I had a feeling we were fading out.” He further proves he’s learning to look back into his past, as the electric American Beauty-vibe of the terrific Cold Roses is revisited during “Goodnight Rose,” while Adams’ North Carolina roots are recalled during the bluegrass-y, saloon-ready “Pearls on a String.” Whereas most of his recent releases have featured a number of gems and then some filler, the lone weak spot here is “Halloweenhead,” which sounds completely out-of-place and is easily mistakable for a Better Than Ezra tune.
Although it’s not too far-fetched to imagine him releasing a classical record or hip-hop album sometime in the next few months (as he sort of hilariously did through his Web site earlier this year), the one thing Adams has always held close to his chest is his country edge, which has been at the core of everything he’s created and what he does best. While he might venture off on his own path every now and then, let’s hope he has more Easy Tiger’s in his system.
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