Spring Break
Ryan Adams' 'Gold' is golden
Todd Broockerd
Issue date: 3/4/02 Section: Culture
- Page 1 of 1
Listen to Ryan Adams' "Gold" with your shirt off, cradling a bottle of gin and balancing an ashtray full of cigarette butts on your stomach.
After a career with Whiskeytown and underground success with "Heartbreaker," singer/songwriter Adams is out on his own again. That's the way he likes it. He shines on his new album "Gold," a testament to drunken loneliness and incommunicable pain. He gets his message across with words he doesn't say - we're getting his side of the story.
While Adams is completely himself, it must be noted just how deep his sources run, which range from Hank Williams to Bob Dylan. Adams falls somewhere in between. And he reads poetry too. On the touching piano ballad, "Sylvia Plath," Adams dreams up an affair with the late poet. "In a mansion on the top of a hill / She'd ash on the carpets / And slip me a pill." He captures the despair that Plath, who died after she stuck her head in an oven, often painted her poetry with.
The songs are hopeful, too. Adams finds himself on the lonely side of town on "New York, New York," but sings "honey, I don't blame you / Hell, I still love you, New York." It oddly works as a post-Sept. 11 tune.
Don't be fooled by the cover. Adams appears with hands on his waist and head down before an upside-down American flag. Anarchy? Hardly. It displays that we are living in a topsy-turvy world, where "all we can do is pray / Pray for tomorrow," as he sings on "Goodnight, Hollywood Bvld."
Adams' words are made even more powerful by his band, which changes throughout the album. Adams does a Mick Jagger impression on "Tina Toledo's Street Walkin' Blues," superbly backed by Chris Stills on electric guitar, Milo de Cruz on bass, and C.C. White - much like Mary Clayton on the Rolling Stones' "Gimmie Shelter" - offering background vocals. Want more blues? White and company also appear on "Nobody Girl," a recording that smacks of Rod Stewart in his old "Gasoline Alley" days. This guy's consulted all of his resources.
Still, Adams is at his best with those heartbroken ballads about lost love and women that done him wrong, like "Harder Now That It's Over" and "Touch, Feel and Lose." On these two, his voice whines, and just as it starts to peak, it cracks and then cuts out. And, like, his voice, Adams lyrics stop short, almost telling us just how much it hurts.
After a career with Whiskeytown and underground success with "Heartbreaker," singer/songwriter Adams is out on his own again. That's the way he likes it. He shines on his new album "Gold," a testament to drunken loneliness and incommunicable pain. He gets his message across with words he doesn't say - we're getting his side of the story.
While Adams is completely himself, it must be noted just how deep his sources run, which range from Hank Williams to Bob Dylan. Adams falls somewhere in between. And he reads poetry too. On the touching piano ballad, "Sylvia Plath," Adams dreams up an affair with the late poet. "In a mansion on the top of a hill / She'd ash on the carpets / And slip me a pill." He captures the despair that Plath, who died after she stuck her head in an oven, often painted her poetry with.
The songs are hopeful, too. Adams finds himself on the lonely side of town on "New York, New York," but sings "honey, I don't blame you / Hell, I still love you, New York." It oddly works as a post-Sept. 11 tune.
Don't be fooled by the cover. Adams appears with hands on his waist and head down before an upside-down American flag. Anarchy? Hardly. It displays that we are living in a topsy-turvy world, where "all we can do is pray / Pray for tomorrow," as he sings on "Goodnight, Hollywood Bvld."
Adams' words are made even more powerful by his band, which changes throughout the album. Adams does a Mick Jagger impression on "Tina Toledo's Street Walkin' Blues," superbly backed by Chris Stills on electric guitar, Milo de Cruz on bass, and C.C. White - much like Mary Clayton on the Rolling Stones' "Gimmie Shelter" - offering background vocals. Want more blues? White and company also appear on "Nobody Girl," a recording that smacks of Rod Stewart in his old "Gasoline Alley" days. This guy's consulted all of his resources.
Still, Adams is at his best with those heartbroken ballads about lost love and women that done him wrong, like "Harder Now That It's Over" and "Touch, Feel and Lose." On these two, his voice whines, and just as it starts to peak, it cracks and then cuts out. And, like, his voice, Adams lyrics stop short, almost telling us just how much it hurts.
