For those out there who would still, on a choice autumnal evening, look forward to decanting their copy of Heartbreaker; or who even put on Stranger’s Almanac, Pneumonia or 29 from time to time, kick back, and get surprised at how good this guy can be; news that Ryan Adams is launching another volley, in what has become a fairly incessant blitzkrieg of recording, provokes a predictably ambivalent response.
Yes, the one-time “Kurt Cobain of alt.country” (although Noel Gallagher would have been a much more accurate point of comparison) still manages the odd flash of Champions League class on the songwriting front (it’s a rare Ryan Adams album – or Rock And Roll – that doesn’t have at least one pearl hidden away in its tracklisting), but when you compare his shots-on-target ratio to his very obvious talent, you’ll see why – so far – he’s yet to achieve all that his prodigious early records suggested was there for the taking.
And as it has been with all his output for the last five years, so it is with Easy Tiger. It’s a Ryan Adams album from tip to toe. With everything, these days, that entails.
Unlovely, mid-tempo, country rock work-outs are strewn all over the joint – ‘Halloweenhead’, ‘Two Hearts’ and ‘Oh My God, Whatever’ being particularly ugly offenders.
Likewise, his well-practiced Gram Parsons party-trick gets dusted off on ‘Goodnight Rose’ and ‘Tears Of Gold’. Which, like most impersonations, is now wearing dangerously thin.
But then, just when you’re backing towards the exit, he’ll deliver a real beauty. The boy has always had a knack with a ballad, and ‘Off Broadway’ and ‘These Girls‘ can take their place proudly with some of their illustrious forbearers. ‘The Sun Also Sets’ shows that, in the right circumstances, he doesn’t always have to lose balance when the pace increases.
And then he goes and ends it all by playing something wonderful called ‘I Taught Myself To Grow Old’. And you fall for it again; thinking: mmm, maybe the next album will be a belter.
Ryan Adams is impossible really: wilfully slip-shod, prone to cliché, desperately unfashionable. But against all better judgement, you get the feeling that he’s worthy of some indulgence.
You’ve to wade through an awful lot of muck to get at it, but there’s definitely still gold in them there hills.