Yet another new album from Mr. Adams, Cold Roses hardly, well cold, off our CD players. Now personally, as happy as I am to have as much of his work as possible, I do think there's an argument for being a little meaner with your output and creating a bit of hunger and anticipation between releases.
That said it's hard to complain when what you're offered is as
good as this! Not that it's a perfect album or that it quite matches the "return to vintage Whiskeytown" hype that's surrounded it. True it signals a return (temporary if his past meandering is anything to go by) to more overt country-isms and there are genuinely some sublime tracks present but, there are also a few niggling doubts.
Firstly one or two tracks, particularly opener 'A Kiss Before I Go', almost verge on a country pastiche and secondly the dreadful, piano-led duet with (and co-written by) Nora Jones, 'Dear John', is a soulless, embarrassing piece of schmaltz that quickly has me reaching for the fast forward button. In addition, tracks like the mournfully slow 'Games' and 'Peaceful Valley' with its off kilter, jerky rhythms and forced vocal, sound like unsuccessful outtakes from Cold Roses.
But then we get the good stuff. Track two 'The End', invoking the Jacksonville of the album's title, is intense and (together with 'My Heart Is Broken') probably closest to Whiskeytown but both edgier and somehow more mature. A familiar subject is the protagonist's almost suffocating allegiance to a place and the memories held there. 'The Hardest Part' also revisits Cold Roses territory but as a gloriously rollicking, younger sibling of 'Let It Ride'. 'Silver Bullets' another slow, piano-led ballad gets everything right that 'Dear John' gets wrong. Frankly, it's beautiful, by the second verse the piano is lifted and carried in the arms of a loving pedal steel and stroked by gorgeously understated strings. The vocal performance, Adams alone, is one of the best on the album, simple and yet rich with a sense of pain, loss and desperation.
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Then there's 'September' - two short verses that examine the hopeless loss felt from the suicide of someone close. Train songs are a great tradition in country music and the one here called, unsurprisingly, 'Trains' is a classic - rolling along on that choo-choo rhythm it clatters in and out of stations picking you up like a willing passenger and dropping you off high on the smell of coal and steam and oil - brilliant.
Bonus tracks are nothing to get too excited by, a fair version of 'Always On My Mind' that has a fairly authentic live 'Vegas' drum sound, boxy, with cymbals splashing away.
So, another Ryan Adams album and apparently another in the pipeline. One thing's absolutely certain, and that is that each time he makes exactly the album he chooses to make, unswayed by expectation or criticism. Good stuff, not my favourite but I guess it's nice to be able to hear and judge for ourselves.
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