What an exquisite album to bring us into 2012. Ryan Adam's debut solo album from 2000 is his masterpiece. It opens with a rockabilly foot stomp, To Be Young, which incites some backyard dancing at Martini Saturdays headquarters. It's followed up with My Winding Wheel, which is a beautifully optimistic love song. In fact they are all beautiful love songs, either about wanting someone, finding someone or losing someone. There is no shortage of women who have fallen in love listening to this album.
Ryan is usually categorised as 'alt-country'; we've always doubted the utility of this term because it seems to only ever be used to describe Ryan Adams and Wilco. In which case, it is probably the greatest music genre of recent times.
My Sweet Carolina is a lonesome travelling ballad about loss, hope, thwarted ambition and missing your home. That is, it's like nearly all country ballads. It says something about the universality of these emotions that such a popular and enduring genre barely covers anything else. Also, like so many country ballads, Emmylou Harris and her ageless voice provide sweet backing vocals.
Ryan's band, Whiskeytown, whom he left just before recording Heartbreaker, were a fun country band. But they didn't have the raw, subtle, brilliant melodies of Heartbreaker and (some of) Ryan's subsequent albums. Tracks 8-10 are the perfected and quintessential core of this album. Damn Sam is a simple tune with confused metaphors, but it's one of the first of his songs that I fell in love with. Come Pick Me Up is his classic, the song most often cited as his best. And even after a thousand listens, the first notes of the harmonica still have enough power to kick you in the guts.
To Be the One is Ryan musing on the night before, with a guitar in hand. I can never decide whether is about a relationship break up or a one night stand. This track has some great lyrics - "I don't know which is worse: to wake up and see the sun, or to be the one that's gone". And the best line on the album - "the empty bottle it misses you and I'm the one it's talking to".
There is a quiet intimacy to this album that no other Ryan Adams' album quite reaches. It's best enjoyed when you're drinking by yourself, late at night with headphones on, yearning for someone to share it with you (but knowing they'd ruin the wonderful loneliness).
For those of you familiar with Ryan, we can't write this blog post without acknowledging that he's a complete wang. I love him and (almost) everything he releases. However, the one time I've seen him live he was terrible. A prima donna who couldn't be bothered to perform. We're seeing him at the Forum in Melbourne next month on the back of his best release in five years (Ashes & Fire). He better bring it this time.
I don't understand why he is categorised as 'alt country'? Oh My Sweet Carolina is very much country. It doesn't matter either way - it is still quite the beautiful song.
ReplyDeleteYes, he's often very country. I think because cool people didn't want to admit they liked country so they had to call it 'alternative', because you know, everything alternative is better.
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