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Volume CXXXIII, Number 10 |
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Ryan Adams gets his rocks off
BRIAN DUNN
ORIENT STAFF
"Dude, Ryan Adams is just a self-loathing little prick."
My friend told me this before I left to purchase Rock N Roll. You know, my friend is right. Ryan Adams is a self-loathing prick. But the fact is, he's a pretty good self-loathing prick.
Maybe Ryan Adams overdoes it. Maybe he hates himself just a little too much. But at the end of every song, you can't help but feel sorry for the guy.
Rock N Roll, Ryan Adams's fourth solo effort after leaving Whiskeytown, departs little from his somber, winning formula. However, this time, instead of wallowing in self-pity with just an acoustic guitar, he slaps on the glam rock shades, turns up the amps and rocks out.
The opening track "This is It" feels like the Goo Goo Dolls on steroids. Adams's whiskey and cigarette-tainted voice soars naturally over a pulsating guitar lick that almost makes you think he put some thought into this record.
In reality, Adams's record label, Lost Highway, refused to release Love is Hell, his original recording. They deemed it too depressing. Love is Hell is now being released as two separate EPs. In response, Adams scrapped together Rock N Roll, his "80s rock and roll album."
Sure, the album feels rushed. Lyrically, Adams isn't too inspiring save a few tracks. On "Wish You Were Here," Adams neglects originality (and songwriting for that matter) in favor of a semi-coherent string of curses: "It's all a bunch of shit / And there's nothing to do around here / It's totally f***ed / I'm totally f***ed / Wish you were here."
Musically, however, Adams shines. Each song draws on either 80s alternative rock or the glitz and glamour of the hair bands-a pretty big step for a country boy who two and half years ago longed for his "Sweet Carolina" on his masterpiece, Heartbreaker.
"Boys," the highlight of the album, is a tribute to the Replacements' early work. It's stripped down and driven by a catchy, repetitive guitar crunch.
"Shallow," the second track on the album, borrows a note or two from Def Leppard's Hysteria. The attitude remains distinctly Ryan Adams, but he covers his disdain for his love with a classic T-Rex power riff.
It's somewhere around this point that Ryan Adams creates a good album. On the title track (ironically, the slowest song on the album), Adams sings "Everybody's cool playing rock n' roll." Adams, however, solemnly admits that he "doesn't feel cool at all."
Adams knows he isn't cool. No one ever liked him in high school. He's had nothing but depressing relationships. This time though, he's letting us all know with a little bit more style.
If you have always liked Ryan Adams but have been afraid to play Heartbreaker at a party, Rock N Roll is for you. It's worthy of "high-volume consumption" as the 80s rockers would say. And if you have enough people in the room, maybe the background noise will drown out those ever-so-uplifting lyrics.
3.3 polar bears of 4
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