Jeder einzelne Song ist eine Schönheit - die Texte, absolut fokussiert auf den Punkt, wobei man die Grundstimmung nur als melancholische Gelassenheit beschreiben kann, was für diejenigen Fans, die sich noch an den alten, bisweilen aufgebrachten Ryan Adams erinnern, sicherlich eine Offenbarung sein wird.

Pop-Alben kann man heutzutage in zwei Kategorien einteilen. Es gibt diejenigen, die man sich ein- oder zweimal anhört; vielleicht lädt man sich den einen wirklich guten Song auf seinen iPod oder seinen Computer -; und dann gibt es noch Alben, die mit jedem Anhören wachsen, die immer ausdrucksstärker, süßer, ja, irgendwie lebensnotwendiger werden, während man sie hört.

"Gold" war so ein Album; "Cold Roses" war auch eines, wie übrigens auch "Jacksonville City Nights". Es hat noch nie zuvor ein Ryan Adams-Album gegeben, das so überzeugend und zusammenhängend geklungen hat wie "Easy Tiger";

"Easy Tiger" ist Ryan Adams' neuntes Studioalbum; seit der Jahrtausendwende hat er bereits die Alben "Heartbreaker" (2000), "Gold" (2001), "Demolition" (2002), "Rock N Roll" (2003), "Love Is Hell" (2004), "Cold Roses" (2005), "Jacksonville City Nights" (2005) und "29" (2006) veröffentlicht.

Gegen Ende lassen die Ideen aber etwas nach, sodass das Werk in meiner persönlichen Adams-Hitliste hinter Cold Roses rangiert.

Und wo rangiert Cold Roses?

Was finden denn alle an Heartbreaker!? Sweet Carolina, My Winding Wheel und Come Pick Me Up sind die einzigsten richtig starken Songs, der Rest plätschert so durchschnittlich vor sich her ...

Ryan Adams preps EP, label readies box set
Writer: Steve LaBate, photo by Mark Abrahams
News, Published online on 11 Sep 2007

The hilarious intro to Ryan Adams’ unreleased track “Dear Diary” finds the singer confessing—in his most ironic singsong voice, over angelic ’80s synths—“Dear Diary, you’ll never guess / They think this album’s overlong / The critics aren’t impressed.”

Maybe this one’ll shut their yappers.

Andy Nelson, VP of Marketing and Artist Development at Adams’ label Lost Highway tells Paste that Adams’ new seven-track EP with his band The Cardinals will hit shelves Oct. 23. The EP will include two brand new songs, “Follow The Lights” and “My Love For You Is Real,” both of which will be featured prominently on the upcoming season of ABC’s October Road.

Also on the EP are live-in-the-studio versions of “Blue Hotel,” a song Adams wrote for Willie Nelson that appeared on the country legend’s Adams-produced album Songbird; new versions of previously released tracks “Dear John” (Jacksonville City Nights), "This Is It” (Rock N Roll) and “If I Am A Stranger” (Cold Roses); and a cover of Alice In Chains’ “Down In A Hole.”

Also currently in the works is a five-disc career-retrospective box set, to be released in 2008. The exact contents of the set are still being discussed, but the two main approaches considered so far are as follows:

A ) Five complete unreleased albums Adams recorded for Lost Highway that connect the dots between his official releases, likely including The Suicide Handbook, Pinkhearts, 48 Hours, Darkbreaker and Black Hole.

B ) A five-disc compilation that includes a mix of previously released and unreleased tracks spanning Adams' tenure on Lost Highway, which runs from 2001’s Gold to this year’s Easy Tiger.

Adams tells Paste that—while many of his songs and even entire albums have leaked over the years—most of the versions of unreleased tracks currently in circulation are not the final product.

“It’s interesting because they’re discussed as if they’re complete works, which is just bizarre,” says Adams. “[But] it’s only bizarre, I think, as an artist, because I feel like someone saw several layers of the painting, and those layers don’t even exist anymore. They hadn’t even dried before there were more things subtracted and added.”

Adams also maintains that, while he’s worked hard to get these “lost” albums ready for release, the box set was the label’s idea, not his, so he’s essentially letting Lost Highway take the reins.

“There hasn’t been a lot of communication,” Adams says, “but [The Cardinals and I] were just in Australia and New Zealand, and I know that mastering goes into this, the finalization of some art work, the packaging has to be discussed, it has to be the correct time—It isn’t that they’ve been doing anything wrong, I just don’t really know what they’ll eventually clear... The balance of power has been moved over to where a great amount of work has been done on [my] end, and now I think a great amount of consideration is happening on their end.”

In the meantime, Adams and The Cardinals will hit the road for a 27-date fall tour, beginning Thursday, Sept. 13 at Charlottesville, Va.’s Paramount Theatre and wrapping up with a Halloween show at Hammerstein Ballroom in Adams’ hometown of New York.

(Look for Ryan Adams on the cover of Paste’s November issue, as we take a comprehensive look at where Adams has been, where he is, and where he’s headed.)