Ryan Adams
Heartbreaker
»
Ryan Adams
Heartbreaker
Bloodshot Records, 2000
RiYL: Whiskeytown, Uncle Tupelo, The Rolling Stones |
It slows the whole song down and should not work at all. In fact, it should ruin the damn song. But it quickly picks up again, with its jaunty acoustic guitars and a quick-fingered slide, and heads to the traditional fade out. It shouldn't work, it catches the listener off-guard, yet it slides almost effortlessly back into the song. It's a contradiction of a song within a song.
Ladies and gentleman, welcome to the World According To Ryan Adams.
Adams, the husky-voiced, sometimes bratty lead singer and chief songwriter of the Raleigh, N.C. band Whiskeytown, certainly catches the listener off-guard on more than one occasion on Heartbreaker, his first solo album on Bloodshot Records. But the most alarming aspect of the album is how much Adams -- already a first-rate songwriter -- has matured as a musician.
Whiskeytown has often been called the heir-apparent to alt.country proprietors Uncle Tupelo, but on this album, Adams sheds any comparison to Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy with an album that far surpasses anything written by those two writers at Adams's relatively young 25 years. In fact, while Tweedy's Wilco has been busy recording new Woody Guthrie songs, Adams here delivers a smattering of songs obviously based on the movement of folk music Guthrie brought to New York City some 40 years ago. Heartbreaker, which was written mostly in New York, is an album of inspirations, and it doesn't take a genius to hear Bob Dylan in "Damn Sam (I Love A Woman That Rains)," or Simon & Garfunkel in "My Winding Wheel."
"As a man, I ain't never been one for sunny days / I'm as calm as a fruit stand in New York and maybe as strange / When the colors go out of my eyes, its usually the change / but damn Sam I love a woman that rains," Adams sings in "Damn Sam." The song is obviously a tribute to Dylan, and the intonations of his vocals recalls a familiar Dylan line that goes, "How many roads must a man walk down."
What's most interesting, though, is the influence that is not prevalent, even though the album has more than one nod to the late, great Gram Parsons. For one, Emmylou Harris adds harmony vocals to "Oh My Sweet Carolina," and the record includes a song called "In My Time Of Need," a title that borrows a line from the 1973 Parsons classic "In My Hour Of Darkness." But Parsons's version of "Cosmic American Music" which was apparent on Adams's earlier work with Whiskeytown has been replaced with true American roots music, creating as close to a modern folk record as possible.
And boy, is it depressing. A resounding theme throughout the record is loss. It can be loss of innocence ("To Be Young," "Oh My Sweet Carolina") or loss of livelihood ("To Be The One"), but the most recurring loss is love. Adams's world-weary, almost tiring voice conveys a sense of loss so dramatic at certain points in the record that the listener has to keep reminding themselves, "hey, it ain't me going through this." "Come Pick Me Up" contains the scathing lines: "Come pick me up / take me out / fuck me up / steal my records / screw all my friends / they're all full of shit / the smile on your face / and we do it again." Damn. We've all been there, bad relationships, the wrong girl. But to hear him sing it, with the passion and the presence of his voice, it brings a whole new level of meaning and emotion to the already disparate feeling.
Heartbreaker is far from a perfect record. The production isn't tight or consistent, the guitars are way too soft in some songs, but it is one hell of a statement. Adams, who was already too good of a songwriter to be so young, puts himself in an elite group with this record. Certainly well on his way to surpassing the men he's oft compared to, Tweedy and Farrar, Adams could be the best pure songwriter since Kurt Cobain. Let's just hope he doesn't blow his brains out anytime soon.
RODEO ROB | An expert on all things "alt," Rob spends his days covering the energy industry and his nights covering the DC-area bars. Raise yer glass especially high to this man, for he has contributed to this site constantly since its creation four years ago.