Whiskeytown and Ryan Adams

Whiskeytown was an alt-country band from Raleigh (North Carolina) that sounded like a punkier Uncle Tupelo. Vocalist Ryan Adams, violinist Caitlin Cary and guitarist Mike Daly came through as raw and depressed on Faithless Street (Mood Food, 1995), their songs (Black Arrow Broken Heart, Drank Like A River) mere rehearsals for something more substantial to come.

Strangers Almanac (Outpost, 1997) fulfilled that promise with 16 Days, Excuse Me While I Break My Own Heart, Turn Around, Not Home Anymore and especially Waiting to Derail. Sometimes, one hears echoes of Replacements (Yesterday's News) and often the style digresses into honkytonk Dancing With The Women At The Bar and rhythm and blues Everything I Do. Overall, it's the best album of alt-country of the year.

Rural Free Delivery (Mood Food, 1997) collects unreleased tracks from the early days.

In the meantime, Ryan Adams then released the solo Heartbreaker (2000) that introduced him as one of the paradigmatic singer-songwriters of his generation thanks to a varied collection of country-tinged tunes, from Oh My Sweet Carolina to the rocking To Be Young and to the galloping Come Pick Me Up.

The band's Pneumonia (Lost Highway, 2001), released two years after it was recorded, turned out to be their swan song as the band had already split up. Songs like Paper Moon, Don't Wanna Know Why and Sit And Listen To The Rain display a powerful songwriting talent, equally at home in the Dylan-ian dirge and in the Springsteen-ian rant, in the Oldham-ian alt-country mode and in the Replacements-ian power-pop mode.

Whiskeytown's violinist Caitlin Cary started a solo career in an old-fashioned, but highly dignified, folk and country manner with While You Weren't Looking (Yep Roc, 2002), produced by Chris Stamey, mostly co-written with guitarist Mike Daly and arranged with help from Whiskeytown's guitarist Mike Daly, drummer Skillet Gilmore and bassist Mike Santoro and Jayhawk's keyboardist Jen Gunderman. Both catchy and fragile (Shallow Heart Shallow Water, Sorry, Fireworks, Please Don't Hurry Your Heart) amidst remnants of Whiskeytown's sound (the twangy and dynamic Thick Walls Down, the upbeat and almost gospel Pony) and a tribute to Joni Mitchell's intellectual folk-jazz (Too Many Keys), the album established Cary as an original voice in a crowded field.

Cary's sophomore I'm Staying Out (Yep ROc, 2003), featuring local dinosaurs of folk-pop Chris Stamey, Don Dixon and Mitch Easter, leaned towards Lucinda Williams' country-pop style (Empty Rooms, You Don't Have to Hide) and Nashville's plaintive ballads (The Next One, I'm Staying Out), although the best numbers (Cello Girl and Beauty Fades Away) were still reminiscent of Whiskeytown's country-rock, and the dreamy Sleepin' In On Sunday opened new avenues of personal confession.

Whiskeytown's vocalist Ryan Adams rediscovered the charisma of Gran Parsons on his country-rock solo debut Heartbreaker (Bloodshot, 2000), but then veered towards the mainstream pop ballad (and reverted to a soul falsetto) on Gold (Lost Highway, 2001). An overlong (21 songs) and wildly eclectic collection, Gold sounded almost like the collaboration between a number of different singer-songwriters: a Neil Young fan (Harder Now That It's Over, Sylvia Plath, the raw Enemy Fire, the ghostly Somehow Someday), a disciple of Warren Zevon's cinematic narrative (Harder Now That It's Over), a southern rocker (the hit New York New York sounds like the Allman Brothers, Answering Bell and The Rescue Blues hark back at the Band's gospel-rock, Touch, Feel, & Lose is a Memphis soul croon, and Tina Toledo's Street Walkin' Blues is greasy blues-rock that borrows the riff from Hendrix's Purple Haze), an experimental auteur (the lengthy Nobody Girl) and a simple folksinger (the plaintive Wild Flowers). All in one. But none truly exceptional. Nonetheless, Adams became the first star of alt-country.

Demolition (2002) collects demos recorded in between concerts: a few could aim for the mainstream (Starting to Hurt and Nuclear), but mostly they pay tribute to Adams' roots and idols without much originality (Cry on Demand, Dear Chicago, Hallelujah, Gimme A Sign, Jesus Don't Touch My Baby).

Ryans' decline continued on Rock N Roll (Lost Highway, 2003), where the "eclectic" persona became a full-fledged identity crisis. The singer-songwriter who apes the Replacements (This Is It, Boys, Do Miss America), T. Rex (Shallow), U2 (So Alive) and Bruce Springsteen (1974) behaves like a young hopeful with little talent. (The song titles reference famous songs of the history of rock and roll).

An album that was scrapped by the record label surfaced as the eight-song EP Love Is Hell Pt 1 (Lost Highway, 2003) and the EP Love Is Hell Pt 2, later reissued as one album, Love Is Hell (Lost Highway, 2004). Overall, this is a more consistent and cohesive Adams. Not coincidentally, it returns to the doom and gloom of the debut album (Political Scientist, Afraid not Scared, Shadowlands, Chelsea Nights, This House Is Not For Sale). But too much melodrama mars the overall atmosphere.

Cold Roses (Lost Highway, 2005), recorded with a new band, the Cardinals, is a 18-song double-CD album that contains way too much filler. Adams is becoming as prolific as superficial. Too many mid-tempo ballads sound alike, as if Adams couldn't finish one and make it truly unique, and kept rehearsing around the same format over and over again. And too much generic meandering country-pop evokes the Grateful Dead's sell-out of the early 1970s (Magnolia Mountain, Cold Roses) or the late Byrds's sell-out of the same period (Cherry Lane, Easy Plateau) without adding much to either cliche. The catchy and mildly atmospheric Let It Ride is passable, Meadowlake Street is a reasonable compromise between epic and intimate, When Will You Come Back Home, Dance All Night are decent nods to Whiskeytown, and the utterly pathetic How Do You Keep Love Alive might be his most sincere moment. But this double album could and should have been an EP.

Jacksonville City Nights (Lost Highway, 2005), Adam's second album in one year and the second collaboration with the Cardinals, marked a return to his rustic roots, with a few nods to Gram Parsons' alt-country (the mid-tempo honky-tonk The End the horns-driven The Hardest Part, and especially Hard Way to Fall, reminiscent of Dylan's country period). As usual, a good portion of the album marks a dramatic collapse in quality, but, by now, it is obvious that Adams does not perceive it as filler: it is a fact that Adams cannot distinguish gold from dirt. Barring suicidal or masochistic tendencies, Adams must truly believe that some of the disposable, predictable numbers (A Kiss Before I Go, My Heart Is Broken, Silver Bullets, Dear John, a duet with Norah Jones) represent his self as well as the more original ones.

29 (Lost Highway, 2005), Adam's third album in one year, differed from the other two for at least three reasons: it was, finally, a solo effort, largely an autobiographical concept album, and the (nine) songs were lengthy ballads. But, like the other two, it continued the maddening habit of including inferior material next to significant songs. Here the eight minutes of Carolina Rain, or a cover of the Grateful Dead's Truckin retitled 29, are hardly what one expects next to the mildly interesting Strawberry Wine and Night Birds. Adams must think that his lyrics are so profound and elegant to justify the mediocre music. Unfortunately, the lyrics are painfully trivial, and the uninspired music only makes them sound even more so.

Easy Tiger (Lost Highway, 2007) was another confused collection that mixed different facets of his persona.

Ryan Adams' Cardinology (2008) was routine and senile country-rock, although, as usual, two or three songs managed to keep the listener awake (Go Easy, Fix It, Magick).

The double-disc rock opera III/IV (2010), recorded in 2007 at the same time as Easy Tiger, revealed another side of Adams, the gritty roots-rocker, or, better, resurrected the rocker who had been buried after Rock N Roll but the few good songs (for example Numbers) do not justify the sprawling release.

The depressed Dirty Rain is misleading as it opens Ashes And Fire (Capitol, 2011), an album that is marked by impeccable and almost robotic execution and boasts some of the sunniest melodies of Adams' career (Lucky Now, Ashes And Fire, I Love You But I Don't Know What to Say).

Ryan Adams (2014) has its doses of diligent Springsteen and Petty imitations (Gimme Something Good, Am I Safe, My Wrecking Ball) but nothing truly memorale.

1989 (2015) is simply a whole-album cover of Taylor Swift's namesake album.

Adams mourned his 2016 divorce on Prisoner (2017), an album with several catchy melodies but also clearly derivative of Bruce Springsteen (Do You Still Love Me), Neil Young, Tom Petty and even Fleetwood Mac.

A turbulent private life didn't help him find the concentration needed for this hyper-prolific stage of his career, with the result that his albums became increasingly boring. A stripped-down sound doesn't benefit Wednesdays (2020), which sounds like part two of 29. Big Colors (2021) contains some 2019 singles (Fuck The Rain and Manchester) and the voodoobilly novelty Power (one of his most energetic songs), but the rest is routine, simple songs for background muzak. The awful Chris (2022) sounds like a collection of leftovers. Romeo & Juliet (2022) contains Rollercoaster but the rest is the usual fare with little to distinguish one song from the others (and there are 19 of them). FM (2022) is even worse, despite a focus on simple melodies, one of the albums that tried to reinvent him as a laid-back guitar-pop entertainer; and Devolver (2022) sounds like a collection of leftovers from FM.