Somewhat in order, times I said “Holy shit” out loud have an *
Sweet Carolina
Damn Sam (I Love a Woman That Rains)*
Ashes & Fire
Dirty Rain
Invisible Riverside
Sweet Little Gal
New York, New York
My Winding Wheel
Let It Ride
Lucky Now
Firecracker
Please Do Not Let Me Go
Carolina Rain
Everybody Knows
Houses on the Hill
Do I Wait
Come Pick Me Up*
Encore:
Halloween*
AMY*
I See Monsters*
English Girls Approximately*
The House Is Not For Sale*
Jacksonville Skyline
Sweet Illusions
Two
Wasted Years
He may have played “AMY” earlier, I’m not sure.
Sigh. I guess I should’ve pitched this myself but I figured he wouldn’t bother doing an LA Weekly interview?
I read the original interview and I don’t ever understand the logic in admitting within an article that you fucked up or didn’t get the story you wanted. You’re a writer! Write around it!
Nice work by my pal August Brown. I may or may not have emailed him a few fanboy tips.
(Inside baseball: I got the green light to write this for the Times when III/IV came out and his publicists didn’t bite. Sigh.)
“Alright, back into character. No laughing. That’s not allowed in alternative country.” (!!!)
“You’re going to have a slightly alternative country nap. There will be cowboy hats with eyes, talking to you, like, ‘Heeeey.’”
“Raise your hand if you had the cookies from behind the counter. A few of you. So you’re feeling the pleasure.”
“All the cool bands play with a lot of reverb. You can’t even hear the music, they just sound like rain falling… What if someone from Pitchfork was here? I meant, what if someone from Pitchfork was here-ere-ere-ere?”
He went on some pretty incredible monologues about Kiss, Metallica and a chocolate cake made by his neighbor
Somewhat in order:
My Sweet Carolina
If I Am A Stranger
Ashes & Fire
Blue Hotel
Invisible Riverside
Dirty Rain
Sweet Little Gal (23rd/1st)
My Winding Wheel
Two
Why Do They Leave?
Let It Ride
New York, New York
Lucky Now
Firecracker
Encore:
Carolina Rain
Jacksonville Skyline (Whiskeytown)
16 Days (Whiskeytown)
My Blue Manhattan
Cannonball Days (Side 4/Gold b-side)
Everybody Knows
Please Do Not Let Me Go
Strawberry Wine <—— AGHHHHHH! YOU GUYS!
The review that really stuck out to me was the Times’ review of 29 which called the album a “cry for help” and completely missed the best storytelling effort of his career.
Thanks! This was the sort of thing I was wondering about. It looks like you mean Los Angeles Times here? Based on Metacritic, this review still seems like an outlier; my sense is that many critics have been willing to get behind Adams, whether or not audiences have come along. I still don’t get why it’s such a crime for someone to compare his current album to the album near-universally acknowledged as his best—especially in a quick post about the fact that his new album is streaming— but I get that you would like for people to acknowledge other albums, too.
Oh, it’s not: I don’t have problems with referencing Heartbreaker (still a wonderful record) so much as I do with the casual perpetuation of the narrative that Ryan’s new album is a “serious” “comeback,” like Easy Tiger was supposed to be before it, and we should sweep his funny/druggy/weird/rock-y albums under the rug.
I didn’t mean to single out Stereogum. (Whose unexpected coverage has been generally amusing in a last-horse-crosses-the-finish-line way.)
Mostly I would like people who like the new stuff to go listen to the old stuff but I suppose we all feel this way whenever our favorite bands get attention.
This really just seems like a case of the intense fan being upset that people who follow an artist less intensely might have a different narrative (case in point: I had to Google “DRA”— and then I had to Google “DRA Ryan Adams”). “Best since Heartbreaker” is sort of Adams’ “best since Automatic for the People,” right? I agree he’s made a bunch of noteworthy music in the meantime, but that doesn’t mean I’d expect the general reader to know about it.
You are correct. But I’m not concerned with general readers: I’m concerned with critics who nearly universally have misunderstood or purposefully underrated Adams’ bravest, most exciting albums. So as that fan, I’m going to keep talking about them.
I’ve drawn the Ryan-Neil Young parallel before and I think/hope in 20 years, people will pick up Love is Hell and compare it to Tonight’s the Night.
(Source: rawkblog)
Who are we complaining about here, exactly? If it’s the usual elephant in the room, well, Pitchfork gave pretty positive scores to Cold Roses and Jacksonville City Nights (the latter was mine).
Not to bruise your ego, pal, but I don’t think anyone ever expected Pitchfork to be the leading authority on major label alt-country singers. 95% of print/old-school critics get the DRA story totally wrong. (See: the horrific L.A. Times review of 29; how every current Ryan feature is an awkward rewrite of the “He’s back!” stories that accompanied Easy Tiger; NPR’s embarrassing blurb; etc.)
Why Pitchfork has covered Ryan at all since Heartbreaker is a little baffling to me, honestly.
(Source: rawkblog)
Stereogum:
All those tracks seem to promise a return to form, and now the entire new album Ashes & Fire is out there, streaming in full at NPR’s website. So: What do you guys think? Are we back in Heartbreaker territory now?
Me, yesterday:
9 out of 10 reviews for this album are going to call it a comeback, name-drop Heartbreaker, etc., as if albums like Love is Hell and 29 never happened.
TRUTH TO POWER
Suicide Handbook*
29
Heartbreaker
Love is Hell
Cold Roses
III/IV
Rock N Roll
Let It B-Minus*
Demolition
Easy Tiger
Jacksonville City Nights
Gold
Destroyer Sessions*
Orion
Cardinology
(* = Unreleased)
I listen to the first seven reasonably regularly. Ashes & Fire probably lands around Cold Roses.
