|
Driving on a clear winter day, on a country road to nowhere, with an affable and
musically astute friend of mine, we were able to discern the following
influences on Ryan Adam’s ‘Gold’ CD from the first 4 songs: Neil Young, The
Band, Bruce Springsteen, Van Morrison, The Rolling Stones, and Wilco. Bowing
down to the alters of your influences is certainly admirable, but at some point
Ryan Adams needs to find his own voice. For listeners who think ‘Astral Weeks’
is a new type of calendar, these sometimes overt influences will not take away
from the effort, soul, feeling and style that adams puts forth on this cd.
Luckily ‘Gold’ clocks in at a mammoth 16 songs and plays for over 70
minutes, allowing Adams to pay tribute to his influences, play some rock-n-roll,
do a county number or two, throw in a ballad, sign Adam Duritz for some
background vocals, write a song about Sylvia Plath (true), add a couple of radio
friendly numbers, and still have room for a few great ‘Ryan Adams”
songs.
Ryan Adams is best know as former lead singer of the band
“Whiskeytown”, an alternative country outfit in the mold of Wilco. Whiskeytown
were loved by critics and heard by no one, and thus lost their record deal.
Adams then made a solo effort in 2000, the independently released
“Heartbreaker”, which was again won critical raves, and was a commercial flop.
This led to his major label solo debut ‘Gold’.
Musically the album is
best defined, as was Whiskeytown, as alternative country. This is a somewhat
loose description, as Adams runs the gamut on this album, trying to be all
things to all people. The album hits its stride and lives up to the recent media
hype when Adams drops the derivative sounds and stakes a claim for his own
voice. This can best be found on his opus work on ‘Gold’ entitled “Nobody
Girl”. Checking in at over 9 minutes, with a wailing guitar, heartfelt vocals
of a man burned, a honky tonk hammond organ in the background,, the song is of a
parasitic girl, who is told off in no uncertain terms by her boyfriend with the
following lyrics –
Just a nobody girl
With a radar to
the scene
When the emptiness finds you
You will find all
the numbers you need
Say you follow your heart
Well, honey
you’re just being lost
Say you follow your heart,
Well, how
much would it cost
You’re a nobody, girl
You’re a nobody girl
‘The Rescue Blues’ is another tremendous song on the cd. 'The Rescue
Blues', simply put, has some of the most honest lyrics on the CD, where you can
almost get a feeling of the number of people who have built Adams up, only to
let him down again, which is something we all experience from time to time and
can relate to:
Everybody wants you to be special
And
everybody wants to get you high
They throw you down a rope when you are
in trouble, baby
Screamin’, “save me”
Then they charge you with
the rescue blues
All in all, this album could have benefited
by the choice admission of a few songs, and a unified musical sound, as opposed
to the cross-genre sampling. However, when “Gold” is good, it is realLy good,
and in this era of musical banality, “Gold” deserves your attention.
Track list:
01. New York, New York
02. Firecracker
03. Answering
Bell
04. La Cienega Just Smiled
05. The Rescue Brothers
06. Somehow,
Someday
07. When The Stars Go Blue
08. Nobody Girl
09. Sylvia
Plath
10. Enemy Fire
11. Gonna Make You Love Me
12. Wild Flowers
13.
Harder Now That It's Over
14. Touch, Feel & Lose
15. Tina Toledo's
Street Walkin' Blues
16. Goodnight, Hollywood Blvd
Sliceboy rating: 4.0 planets
Talk about Ryan Adams - Gold>>
|
Game News
