I think I stopped listening to Ryan Adams around the time that allegations of sexual misconduct against him first surfaced. This wasn’t particularly due to those allegations, but because I had grown tired of the endless slew of releases and a seeming lack of quality control. There is, after all, only so much Ryan Adams music that anyone needs, and a lot of his albums just weren’t to my taste any more. Since then of course, any criminal proceedings against him have been dropped, Adams has apologised and time has moved on. In the intervening years he has predictably become persona non grata, effectively dropped by all mainstream media, unreported and unsupported. You could be forgiven for thinking that his career may be finished, except that Adams has gone into productivity overdrive in a way that makes his earlier proliferation of albums feel like a test run.
In the post-cancellation years since 2019 Ryan Adams has released some 15 albums, making sifting the wheat from the chaff an arduous task. Being an Adams completist has never been easy, his punk sensibilities and predilection for churning out rock’n’roll stodge sitting uneasily with his singer-songwriter confessional side and his jangly country-rock output. So how to sift through the plethora of recent stuff? Well, I’ve realised that it’s pointless trying to like every Ryan Adams album, but there will always be diamonds amongst the rough. Last year we were treated to no fewer than 6 albums, one of which is a live rendering of his earlier Prisoners from 2017. Of the others, Star Sign is probably the best. A vaguely countryish singer-songwriter affair with strings, pedal steel and harmonica it is unusually brief at 40-odd minutes and 10 songs. It is vulnerable in a Neil Young-ish kind of way, most overtly on the title track. Next, Sword & Stone is the album that is most straightforward, a basic guitar, bass and drums affair that sounds like Ryan Adams doing Ryan Adams. It’s also blessed with decent songs. 1985 is a punkish set of material, Heatwave and Blackhole are both chock full of somewhat uninspiring rockers, the latter an album shelved from earlier in Adams’ career.
2022 and 2023 produced 8 albums by my reckoning. These included a live acoustic set Return to Carnegie Hall and non-essential and poorly produced renderings of Nebraska, Blood on the Tracks and Morning Glory in their entirety. FM and Devolver are largely Adams by numbers, the kind of uninspiring rockers that he churns out by the bucketload. More mannered is the lovely Romeo and Juliet with jangly guitars and the kind of yearning melodies that Adams does so well. Best of the crop, and one of his finest albums since Cold Roses, with which it shares a similar vibe is Chris, one of the 3 albums (along with Wednesdays and Big Colors) pencilled for release in 2019 before the misconduct allegations surfaced. Despite its 18 song length it is a quality record with some of Adams best songwriting for ages. If you only listen to one album this should be it.
This year a follow-up to Wednesdays, Another Wednesday, has appeared. I’d give it a miss if I were you. A covers double set, Changes, is about to come out this month too. Most of the 15 albums described have not had a mainstream physical release, though most have been available through Adams’ Pax-Am online store on LP and CD. None have been promoted to any extent and hardly any reviews exist in the usual media channels. Whatever you may think of Ryan Adams and his effective cancellation, it’s to his credit that he had doggedly persisted in making music, some of it amongst his very best. Chris, Star Sign, Sword & Stone and Romeo and Juliet are all worth your time. I would add to that list Prisoner B Sides which slipped out under the radar in 2017. It’s a shame that Adams’s career has been bedevilled with his idiotic behaviour. He is now reportedly a much more sober individual in all senses of the word. Perhaps history will be kinder to his musical legacy, if not to him as a person.
Great precis of a frenetic period of RA activity. It seems to me that only King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard are more prolific, though I’m sure lots of artists spew out regular offerings too.
It’s been challenging keeping up with all his releases and this overview will certainly help sift through a few tunes.
I’ve not listened to anything new after the FM album in 2022 and wasn’t interested in going to see him live last year really, the couple of times I’ve seen him seem enough especially without a band.
Kind of gave up on him way before the allegations. Heartbreaker and Gold being to my taste. Didn’t he cover Taylor’s 1989 or was that earlier?
He did indeed, and very good it was too. I would say it’s better than the original, but I realise I may end up being horsewhipped.
Oh, it must be some indie record that’s much cooler than hers…🙄
Thanks for taking one for the AW team.
I’ve listened to most if not all of these. There are some absolutely belting songs in there as well as heaps of the forgettable and the disposable.
As for 1989 – I “compiled” a version where Taylor & Ryan’s lie alongside each other, track by track. One of Ms Swift’s best albums but Ryan more than holds his own (if only Moose was around)…..
I bought ‘Heartbreaker’ and ‘Demolition’ back in the day – both of which I enjoyed.
So tell me, from a completist’s point of view, are those two of the better ones, or are there other gems hidden amongst the flood of material?
I like that track above from ‘Chris’ a lot – but that album seems unlikely to find its way here at the prices I’ve seen online. But if there are one or two others that are available at sensible prices, then maybe…
I think Cold Roses is his best. I listened to it again with headphones on just a few days ago, and it sounded fabulous. Gold and Love is Hell are both pretty good, but both suffer from filler. Of his more recent albums Ashes & Fire and the eponymous Ryan Adams are both worth hearing. Have a listen to Chris too. It’s on all the streaming platforms, or available from the PaxAm shop (but pricey postage from the US).
* update – Chris is also available as a reasonably priced download from 7digital in MP3 or 16-bit FLAC format.
I dropped out way before you did, but I would also chuck in a vote for Strangers Almanac by Whiskeytown and Jacksonville City Night, both of which are probably peak Americana Adams.
The only one I’ve heard recently that I really enjoyed is Do You Still Love Me, but will check out some others based on the OP – ta!
A bit over 10 quid gets me the CD of the ‘Chris’ album, and the cheapest shipping nearly doubles that – and that’s still acceptable for a decent album. The FedEx options offering quicker delivery are, as you say, heinous. Trouble is that the cheapo shipping option is clearly marked as ‘duties unpaid’ – which suggests that it’ll only take one jobsworth at the point of import for there to be a humungous extra charge – the sort that adds another 20 quid for a ‘handling fee’. Heigh ho, so that’s no dice. So I’ll look at the download option instead.
A good post and I have been watching his recent career with interest. His last UK tour got great reviews and I was tempted but ticket prices circa £70 for a solo singer songwriter down on his luck seemed way too high to me
I do want to hear Chris and I will see if an American mate who I am visiting later this year will get it for me before I get there.
@Vulpes-Vulpes I would say that Gold, Heartbreaker and Demolition are his best albums and the stuff with The Cardinals is very good too.
Shame the charges against him were dropped after his career was effectively trashed. He has shown public remorse and has cleaned up his drinking habit. Hopefully he can rebuild something of a career because there is no doubt he possesses a special talent.
Gold will be added to my haul, thanks for the reco.
There are various versions of “Gold” (inevitably) @vulpes-vulpes.
The original CD came with a second disk called “Side four” with more tracks. There now appears to be a version with “Side Five” too, and the single disk version on Dodgers now includes the first track from Side Four as the 17th track. In a nutshell this is why Ryan Adams is so fucking irritating.
@Twang
The version I’ve ordered is a double CD:
https://www.discogs.com/release/1108555-Ryan-Adams-Gold
This is the one with the ‘Side Four’ second CD with 5 tracks. Cost me just over 3 quid, and is claimed to be ‘near mint’. That’ll do me!
Sounds like the one I have and it’s just fine.
Another vote for Ashes & Fire here and of course Bryan Adams – Greatest Hits.
Sorry, sorry.
Thanks for that resumé.
I too lost interest in the pre-allegation era, having regarded him for many years as one of my favourite artists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Only yesterday I was in Fopp and saw a few RA albums I had never heard of, wondering if any were worth listening to, so thank you again for the guidance.
He lost me after an appalling gig where he was a complete nob. Heartbreaker, Gold and Stranger’s Almanac are all I need.
Likewise. Those are the only three I require too.
All killer, no filler. After this the ratio is all over the place.
Yep. It’s his apparent lack of quality control that did it for me.
And the underlying implication that he thinks it’s all brilliant. He needs a good producer.
Absolutely. Someone needs to tell him that it’s not the best of ideas to just release everything he does because a lot of it is crap. It got frustrating having to wade through so much substandard music in what became the increasingly unlikely event that he might regain a glimmer of the artistry on display on the aforementioned albums. It’s a pity as he has obvious talent but it’s squandered by what appears to be bad impulse control.
Far worse people than him seem able to continue unblemished careers. And while falling down drunk excuses nothing, it seems his banishment is harsh. But the US media is at one in cancelling him. When his Nebraska (OK) came out, I took advantage of the free DL he was offering, and endeavoured to review it for a US based covers blog I contribute to. The editor apologised but said he couldn’t possibly publish as it would effectively lead to the site being blackballed too. Ad revenue and all that.
@retropath2 therein is the issue. The complaints about him were dropped (unproven??) yet the damage seemingly irreparable at least in the USA.
I haven’t listened to much of his stuff for many years but he is an artist I still retain much interest in due mainly to his past and his potential for brilliance.
I would like to listen to Chris in particular but it is not easy to do so since its availability is poor or at least it was – I will look again.
I think his prolific releases are probably out of desperation to prove he is a good guy these days.
A psychiatrist would probably have a field day with his erratic behaviour.
It’s not just in the US that he has been ignored. Uncut magazine, previously a champion of Adams hasn’t mentioned him for years. I searched their website and the last time his name came up was 2019. Perhaps they have one eye on their sales in the US market.
To be fair, the FBI investigation into his possible grooming of a child was dropped, but that still leaves the multiple former partners alleging an ongoing pattern of coercive control across various relationships and marriages. He’s apologised for the latter, so it appears there was some basis for those accusations.
Whether that’s enough to merit his cancellation, I don’t know – but then he doesn’t feel all that cancelled given the volume of music he’s putting out and the number of shows he’s playing. He’s blatantly past his heyday, so there was always going to be a bit less press as time went by – although it is surprising to learn that Uncut have blackballed him.
I’m slightly torn on it all. On the one hand, if an artist’s personal behaviour creeps people out and they don’t want to cover them any more then maybe that’s fair enough. No one has a god given right to column inches, after all. And it’s not like he’s been banished to the shadow realm; he’s simply enjoying a slightly less successful version of the same career. In fact, it’s possible that this was essentially his trajectory even before the allegations.
On the other hand, the whole cancellation thing does feel quite random. The court of public opinion is a fickle thing, so we end up with some people being punished for their sins while others who we all know to have done much worse appear to sail blithely on.
Personally, I think that at least some of the issue here is that Adams’ private persona (a controlling emotional abuser) was revealed to be at odds with his public persona (windswept, heartbroken indie kid) – and that seems to be amongst the things people find hardest to forgive. We’ll forgive an arsehole, but most of us don’t easily forget being mis-sold.
I like his stuff, and probably stuck with him longer than most. But I disagree that he’s been mis-sold. The songs are almost always honest about his turbulent relationships, he doesn’t seem to have much imagination other than to write about himself- it’s all there. His narcissism is evident right off the bat on Heartbreaker – a recording of him winning an argument.
Maybe – I guess it’s in the eye of the beholder.
Come Pick Me Up, to give but one example, always suggested to me someone more likely to be abused than to be the abuser. A sensitive soul, a little boy lost.
The boozing and the fucked upness was always there, but I’m not so sure about the coercive control.
Booze always gives the bullied an opportunity to show off what they have learnt from their experiences, and where to apply it. Or who to.
I am not sure on this either. Given that the biggest complaint was from a hard done by ex I tend to employ a little pinch of salt. The World is full of vindictive exes of both genders. His biography written well before his cancellation acknowledges his erratic personality and boorish behaviour. Don’t think he was proud of himself which probably explains why his apologies were frequent. Stopping drinking is probably the best achievement in his career. He clearly had a problem.
In the interests of accuracy; it was seven women, including his ex-wife and Phoebe Bridgers, all alleging a similar pattern of behaviour.
I don’t think there’s much need for salt here: it’s multiple credible accusers and he’s apologised for it.
Others spoke up too. Guitarist Todd Wisenbaker who toured with Adams said “There were times when I chose to believe his insane version of the truth because it was easier than believing that anyone is capable of being this much of a monster.” He added, “I’ve recently learned that pretty much everything he’s ever told me is a lie upon a lie upon a lie.”
If he’s sorted himself out and become a better person then good for him. It doesn’t change what he was.
Anything as good as “Run to You”?
Well, there’s his version of ‘Summer of 69’. He once had a heckler thrown out of the Ryman Auditorium for requesting him to play this song.