Record Reviews
📝 2096 reviews| Artist | Title | Review |
|---|---|---|
| Mick Abrahams | All Said And Done | |
| Geoff Achison | Sovereign Town | <p>With the list of contenders vying for the 'Australian Blues album of the Year' seemingly growing each week, Melbourne's Geoff Achison has thrown his hat in the ring, with the release of “Sovereign Town”, a collection of 12 songs, which are inspired by the gold rush in Victoria, around the 1850's. The album was recorded in Ballarat, a town steeped in gold mining history and part of the “Golden Triangle”, close to where Achison grew up. He recalls the area and remembers exploring the old diggings, when he was a kid, so this is almost a revisit to those childhood memories and his journey through life and as a musician.</p><p>For this album, Geoff has eased off the tempo and rocking blues we are somewhat used to with his Souldiggers band, delivering an album of mostly chilled out, easy listening solo work which would suit any lazy afternoon, with sun blazing down and a nice bottle of red breathing in the sea breeze – well that how I've been listening to it and it works a treat! For me personally, it's been a difficult album to review because a lot of the attraction to this is in the lyrics, and to delve deeper into that I would need to break each track down in real detail – so I'll leave that for you to explore & enjoy.</p><p>So, onto the music, and we start with a simple percussion & double bass intro which leads us into the opening track 'Skeleton Kiss', with Geoff's gravel-like vocals and mellow acoustic guitar playing setting the tone for the album. 'Miniature Men' & 'Walk Away' continue the relaxed rhythm, as we ebb & flow along with Geoff. The title track 'Sovereign Town' picks the pace up ever so slightly with some beautiful finger picking acoustic work. 'Wandsworth Bridge' is a track full of lyrics of lost loves and heartbreak, with a wonderful gentle electric solo in the middle. 'Misha Bella' takes us on an almost jazz-blues trip, with some incredible guitar work once more and jazz club drum beat and Hammond Organ-like keys. The album takes a completely different turn with the upbeat 'Small Town Crime', which caught me by surprise – pleasantly I may add – as I was “in the zone” so to speak, but I was soon back there with the outstanding 'World of Blue', one of my favourites on the album, with its haunting slide guitar apparent throughout the track. 'Sleepwalking' is another one of my favourites and it's so great to hear Geoff being able to display his outstanding acoustic work throughout, without the temptation to “rock it up” at any time on the album. The beautiful instrumental track 'Hand of Faith' displays some almost Spanish-like acoustic guitar playing (I even opened a bottle of Rioja at this point), before 'Rescue the Past' pulls us back with a slightly quicker tempo with nice chorus and slide solo work. The album closes with 'Coolbardie Sunrise', another instrumental that showcases Geoff's amazing finger picking talents, which is played on his “Regal” resonator.</p><p>—<strong>Sean Bennett</strong><p> |
| William Ackerman | It Takes A Year | |
| William Ackerman | Childhood And Memory | |
| William Ackerman | Passage | |
| William Ackerman | Past Light | |
| William Ackerman | Conferring With The Moon | |
| William Ackerman | Imaginary Roads | |
| William Ackerman | Imaginary Roads | |
| Ryan Adams | Heartbreaker | <p>As Whiskeytown finally ground to a halt in the wake of an astonishing number of personal changes following Faithless Street (coupled with record company problems that kept their final album, Pneumonia, from reaching stores until two years after it was recorded), Ryan Adams ducked into a Nashville studio for two weeks of sessions with Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. While arch traditionalists Welch and Rawlings would hardly seem like a likely match for alt-country's bad boy, the collaboration brought out the best in Adams; Heartbreaker is loose, open, and heartfelt in a way Whiskeytown's admittedly fine albums never were, and makes as strong a case for Adams' gifts as anything his band ever released. With the exception of the Stones-flavored "Shakedown on 9th Street" and the swaggering "To Be Young (Is to Be Sad, Is to Be High)," Heartbreaker leaves rock & roll on the shelf in favor of a sound that blends low-key folk-rock with a rootsy, bluegrass-accented undertow, and while the album's production and arrangements are subtle and spare, they make up in emotional impact whatever they lack in volume. As a songwriter, Adams concerns himself with the ups and downs of romance rather than the post-teenage angst that dominated Whiskeytown's work, and "My Winding Wheel" and "Damn, Sam (I Love a Woman That Rains)" are warmly optimistic in a way he's rarely been before, while "Come Pick Me Up" shows he's still eloquently in touch with heartbreak. Adams has always been a strong vocalist, but his duet with Emmylou Harris on "Oh My Sweet Carolina" may well be his finest hour as a singer, and the stripped-back sound of these sessions allows him to explore the nooks and crannies of his voice, and the results are pleasing. Whiskeytown fans who loved the "Replacements-go-twang" crunch of "Drank Like a River" and "Yesterday's News" might have a hard time warming up to Heartbreaker, but the strength of the material and the performances suggest Adams is finally gaining some much-needed maturity, and his music is all the better for it.</p><p>— <strong>Mark Deming</strong></p><hr/><p>Remember when Ryan Adams released Heartbreaker* *and confused diehards wondered what happened to the *real Ryan Adams? You know, the lovable fuck-up who made alt-country sound dangerous, *lived the words of "Waiting to Derail" and needed no assistance breaking his own heart? If this scenario sounds too remote, just sub out *Heartbreaker *for "basically *anything *Ryan Adams has done in the 21st century." Of course, none of those things have achieved the sterling reputation of *Heartbreaker, which makes the album seem like the least interesting choice for a reissue: *aren't *Rock N Roll and 29 *better conversation-starters? But maybe Adams isn't expecting another round of exaltations with this deluxe repackage: In fact, bundling it with a bunch of wearable merch (i.e., "exclusive 3-inch Heartbreaker patch") might be more a sly commentary on its supposed "authenticity"—even it still towers over Adams' solo work, it's no more *real *than 1989**.</p><p>The myth of *Heartbreaker *as the realest breakup album ever starts to fall apart the minute you press play: it is certainly the saddest record to contain the line, "a mouth full of cookies," however. "(Argument with David Rawlings Concerning Morrissey)" presents Ryan Adams as what he's repeatedly proven to be in the years since—a hilarious trivia nerd and musical advocate. It's an important part of what makes Ryan Adams Ryan Adams, and the source from which we were given *1984, *the Extra Cheese EP, his long-rumored banjo and mandolin cover of *Is This It?, *and his prog-metal odyssey *Orion. *However, it's the first and maybe last time he could be that guy without feeling like he was *trying *to make a point. Back then, there was no construct of Ryan Adams, and this presumably *in media res *debate snippet was an effective way for him to establish an identity on his solo debut.</p><p>More importantly, it's an argument concerning Morrissey—not Gram Parsons, not Bob Dylan, not Paul Westerberg. The influence of the Smiths would fully manifest on Adams' Love Is Hell, and the inclusion of a "Hairdresser on Fire Jam" demo in the bonus material here suggests that maybe his maligned bedsit opus has more in common with *Heartbreaker *than we think. Either way, it's an important artistic allegiance, linking Adams and Morrissey as the rare artists who can recognize the inherent absurdity in exchanging performative sadness for adoration.</p><p>After all, a truly inconsolable song couldn't possibly be given a title like "To Be Young (Is To Be Sad, Is To Be High)." On it, Adams appears more wise and empathetic than young and sad; note that it's sung in the past tense. Like so much of *Heartbreaker, *its focus isn't misery, but nostalgia—its inclusion during the opening credits of Old School, a comedy suffused with longing for a simple forms of self-destructive behavior, made its flexibility all the more apparent. It's a song that Adams plays at nearly every one of his shows, not to commiserate with the crowd, but to celebrate a past time when its linear logic made all the sense in the world. Think of it as Adams' "Rubber Ring," an open invitation to fondly remember that time when you relied on a fucked-up guy like him to save your life.</p><p>The introduction is an outlier, though—would Heartbreaker be held in the same regard if it was just wistful folk-rock like "My Winding Wheel?" Even though "AMY" outright names the supposed inspiration behind *Heartbreaker *and is the most striking stylistic divergence from Whiskeytown (prior to the experimental Pneumonia), an album of weeping, floral psychedelia might have been too much, too soon. Though Adams claims that the titling of *Heartbreaker *was a last-second decision made while staring at a Mariah Carey poster, *Heartbreaker is Heartbreaker *for the times it allows the listener sees themselves in its own album cover—prostrate, staring at the ceiling, half-hoping that cigarette drops onto their bed so they can feel something different.</p><p>Despair alone never accounted for *Heartbreaker'*s unusual resonance. It isn't the most dire or confessional account of bad romance; its language is not the most clever. There are all kinds of odd tangents, character is frequently broken, and it's probably a few songs longer than it really needs to be. *Heartbreaker *isn't a tidy narrative or song cycle about relationships anyways; otherwise, how to explain the inclusion of the barroom brawl "Shakedown on 9th Street" or the Dylan goof "Damn Sam (I Love a Woman That Rains)?" Even "In My Time of Need" isn't actually about *Ryan Adams' *time of need and certainly inapplicable to a broken relationship between an up-and-coming rock star and a music publicist; it's pretty much a Whiskeytown-style character study about rural financial distress ("I work these hands to bleed, cause I got mouths to feed/and I got $15 hid above the stove").</p><p>No, the power of this album, and the reason it reminds its devotees too much of him, or her, or a past version of themselves, can be found in "Come Pick Me Up." "Come Pick Me Up" is the that ends most of Adams' concerts these days and probably will for the rest of his career. On a basic level, it could slot alongside petulant, scorned-dude screeds like "Song for the Dumped" or Kanye West's "Heartless;" it is about a woman who seemingly fucked him over. But the most important lyric isn't the one about this is the kind of person who would steal your records and screw your friends without the slightest remorse. It's "*I wish you would"—*the point of "Come Pick Me Up" is not to marvel at this person's monstrosity and project it outwards. It's to see yourself in Ryan Adams and remember every single time you've allowed yourself to get fucked over and even worse, sought it out.</p><p>In every repetition of "I wish you would," Adams underlines not just the appeal of Heartbreaker, but most breakup albums in general. On some level, they make no evolutionary sense: life is hard enough, why would anyone be drawn to music that lets you relive your most miserable moments? Yeah, there's jokes and asides and times where Heartbreaker rocks, but those defense mechanisms malfunction on "Call Me on Your Way Back Home" when Adams sings, "oh, I just wanna die without you" and it sure as hell sounds like the truth.</p><p>Maybe you wanna die. But you didn't. And that's OK. Like Morrissey, or really any singer-songwriter worth hearing on the topic, Adams doesn't see the occasional heartbreak as a terminal fate, but an essential part of the human condition. In closing one of his performances captured on 2015's Live at Carnegie Hall**, Adams yells, "THAT'S IT! YOU'RE SAD NOW!!! NOW YOU'RE SAD!!! EVERYBODY'S SAD NOW! YEAAAAHHH!!!!" Everyone gets the joke. "Come Pick Me Up" isn't miserable; like Heartbreaker, it's actually enjoyable knowing you can hit bottom for 50 minutes and still appreciate the view.</p><p>— <strong>Steven Byrd, Pitchfork</strong></p> |
| Ryan Adams | Gold | <p>One would think that being Ryan Adams would be a pretty good deal at the time of this album's release; he had a major-label deal, critics were in love with him, he got to date Winona Ryder and Alanis Morissette, Elton John went around telling everyone he was a genius, and his record company gave him carte blanche to do whatever he wanted. But to listen to Gold, Adams' first solo album for his big-league sponsors at Lost Highway, one senses that there are about a dozen other musicians Adams would love to be, and nearly all of them were at their peak in the early to mid-'70s. Adams' final album with Whiskeytown, Pneumonia, made it clear that he was moving beyond the scruffy alt-country of his early work, and Gold documents his current fascination with '70s rock. Half the fun of the album is playing "Spot the Influence": "Answering Bell" is a dead ringer for Van Morrison (with fellow Morrison enthusiast Adam Duritz on backing vocals), "Tina Toledo's Street Walkin' Blues" is obviously modeled on the Rolling Stones, "Harder Now That It's Over" sounds like Harvest-period Neil Young, "New York, New York" resembles Stephen Stills in his livelier moments (Stephen's son, Chris Stills, plays on the album), and "Rescue Blues" and "La Cienega Just Smiled" suggest the influence of Adams' pal Elton John. Of course, everyone has their influences, and Adams seems determined to make the most of them on Gold; it's a far more ambitious album than his solo debut, Heartbreaker.</p><p>The performances are polished, Ethan Johns' production is at once elegant and admirably restrained, Adams is in strong voice throughout, and several of the songs are superb, especially the swaggering but lovelorn "New York, New York," the spare and lovely "When the Stars Go Blue," and the moody closer, "Goodnight, Hollywood Blvd." But while Gold sounds like a major step forward for Adams in terms of technique, it lacks the heart and soul of Heartbreaker or Pneumonia; the album seems to reflect craft rather than passion, and while it's often splendid craft, the fire that made Whiskeytown's best work so special isn't evident much of the time. Gold sounds like an album that could win Ryan Adams a lot of new fans (especially with listeners whose record collections go back a ways), but longtime fans may be a bit put off by the album's richly crafted surfaces and emotionally hollow core.</p><p>—<strong>Mark Deming</strong></p> |
| Ryan Adams | New York, New York (EP) | <p>One would think that being Ryan Adams would be a pretty good deal at the time of this album's release; he had a major-label deal, critics were in love with him, he got to date Winona Ryder and Alanis Morissette, Elton John went around telling everyone he was a genius, and his record company gave him carte blanche to do whatever he wanted. But to listen to Gold, Adams' first solo album for his big-league sponsors at Lost Highway, one senses that there are about a dozen other musicians Adams would love to be, and nearly all of them were at their peak in the early to mid-'70s. Adams' final album with Whiskeytown, Pneumonia, made it clear that he was moving beyond the scruffy alt-country of his early work, and Gold documents his current fascination with '70s rock. Half the fun of the album is playing "Spot the Influence": "Answering Bell" is a dead ringer for Van Morrison (with fellow Morrison enthusiast Adam Duritz on backing vocals), "Tina Toledo's Street Walkin' Blues" is obviously modeled on the Rolling Stones, "Harder Now That It's Over" sounds like Harvest-period Neil Young, "New York, New York" resembles Stephen Stills in his livelier moments (Stephen's son, Chris Stills, plays on the album), and "Rescue Blues" and "La Cienega Just Smiled" suggest the influence of Adams' pal Elton John. Of course, everyone has their influences, and Adams seems determined to make the most of them on Gold; it's a far more ambitious album than his solo debut, Heartbreaker.</p><p>The performances are polished, Ethan Johns' production is at once elegant and admirably restrained, Adams is in strong voice throughout, and several of the songs are superb, especially the swaggering but lovelorn "New York, New York," the spare and lovely "When the Stars Go Blue," and the moody closer, "Goodnight, Hollywood Blvd." But while Gold sounds like a major step forward for Adams in terms of technique, it lacks the heart and soul of Heartbreaker or Pneumonia; the album seems to reflect craft rather than passion, and while it's often splendid craft, the fire that made Whiskeytown's best work so special isn't evident much of the time. Gold sounds like an album that could win Ryan Adams a lot of new fans (especially with listeners whose record collections go back a ways), but longtime fans may be a bit put off by the album's richly crafted surfaces and emotionally hollow core.</p><p>—<strong>Mark Deming</strong></p> |
| Ryan Adams | Demolition | <p>On more than one occasion, Ryan Adams has played solo acoustic gigs that consisted almost entirely of songs he wrote the afternoon of the show, and after his 2001 album, <A class=a href="javascript:z('Agukzikzabbo9')"><I>Gold</I></A>, finally gave him an audience outside the small but rabidly enthusiastic alt-country scene, the very prolific Adams seemed to waste no time laying down as many songs as he possibly could. If one believes what they read in New Musical Express, Adams cut about four albums' worth of material during sessions with various musicians and producers within the space of a year (not even counting the much talked about but to date unheard four-track recordings of blues versions of all the songs from the Strokes' debut disc, <I>Is This It?</I>).</p><p>Sensibly enough, Adams and his record company decided that releasing such a huge flood of material wasn't in the best interest of either artist or label, and instead Adams cherry-picked these sessions into a 13-track collection, <I>Demolition</I>. Appropriately enough, <I>Demolition</I> sounds less like "the third Ryan Adams album" than a collection of stray tunes — some of which are very good, especially the lazy summer vibe of "Tennessee Sucks," the up-tempo acoustic twang of "Chin Up, Cheer Up," the winsome "Cry on Demand," and the heading-off-the-rails rocker "Starting to Hurt." But more than a few of the other songs on the album sound like rough drafts rather than completed works, and <I>Demolition</I> seems to lack a strong thematic or structural center.</p><p>In short, <I>Demolition</I> sounds like a bunch of demos, which of course is just what it is, and while it preserves a few strong tunes and offers an insight into Adams' creative process, it also makes clearthat even the rising wunderkind of Americana can benefit from a bitof judicious editing and polishing.</p><p> — <strong>Mark Deming, AllMusic</strong></p><hr/><p>It's been just under a year (365 days to be exact - but this year was a leap year) since Ryan Adams released <EM>Gold</EM>, the album by which he truly broke into the mainstream music collective. Over this time Adams has gone from former-Whiskeytown frontman to having his "New York" become an anthem for the 9/11 attacks, and having his "When The Stars Go Blue" be performed live by The Corrs with Bono. Now that's quite a year for countrified folk-rocker.</p><P>During this time (and in the time before) Adams also managed to record a crapload of demos. Originally toying with the idea of releasing these 60 tracks over four discs, his label (luckily) opted to trim these down to thirteen - the results of which being <EM>Demolition</EM>. (Get it? "Demo"-lition? Pretty clever, eh?)</p><P>Anyway, <EM>Demolition</EM> follows in a much similar vein as <EM>Gold</EM>, and given the quality, could have rightly been <EM>Gold</EM>'s true follow-up. As is usual with Adams, the high points are many, but are most prevalent on the album's lighter moments. The simple piano and guitar of "Cry On Demand" and the tongue-in-cheek lyrical balladry of "Tennesee Sucks" offer Adams at his most impressive. The Smiths-rock of "Starting to Hurt," doesn't fare too badly either. The minimalist depression of the closing "Jesus (Don't Touch My Baby)," however, is one of Adams finest (and bravest) moments<EM>ever</EM>.</p><P>Still, it's not all praises of glory for Adams. As a set of what's really just a bunch of outtakes, there are the inevitable bombs. The opening "Nuclear" shows why Adams is not really a <EM>rock</EM> star: he just can't rock out that well. The guitar riff of "Dear Chicago" bears a striking similarity to Dog's Eye View (remember them?), and that's just not all that cool.</p><hr/><p>Whenever I voice my concerns about Ryan Adams to friends, they cringe in preparation for a misdirected, elitist screed about the dangers of selling out-- just as you may be doing right now. So let me be upfront: I'm happy for the guy. I don't have any personal issues with him, nor do I think he's committed any brazen acts of treason toward the music community at large.</p><p>Adams has been grooming himself for rock star status for a very long time, without an ounce of subtlety. In fact, he was qualified from the very beginning, when his band Whiskeytown signed with DGC subsidiary Outpost Recordings. If anything, he's overqualified now: he's prolific, talented, and cocksure, and he's got the kind of apple-cheeked, midwestern good looks (and jean-jacket) that suggest rural summer nights spent listening to "Pink Houses". Even before Winona, Alanis, Elton John duets, Gap commercials, MTV specials, and the incredibly fortuitous and profitable coup of releasing Gold, with its flag-bedecked cover art and single "New York" mere weeks after 9/11, he was as good as in.</p><p>Gold, though, was a disappointment to many longtime fans, not because he was suddenly the very definition of mainstream success but because it simply couldn't hold a candle to its predecessor, 2000's stunning Heartbreaker. And yet, as uneven, flawed, and possibly symptomatic of megalomania as Gold may have been, it increased Adams' celebrity tenfold. No longer consigned to Sunday morning fodder for sentimental hipsters, alt-country purists, and aging public radio DJs hunting for latest reincarnation of Gram Parsons, Adams became so very famous that both of my parents now own at least one of his albums-- and that, ladies and gentlemen, is saying quite a lot.</p><p>I once offered up the observation that Ryan Adams would be capable of churning out some of the most solid, affecting music around were he contained in a room and limited to a four-track and the fewest possible instruments. Demolition should, by all rights, be that project. Demos hold the promise of the understated songs I've always wanted to believe Adams left off his bombastic, overwrought last offering. Given what it is, though, Demolition is awfully slick. And while not, in theory, a follow-up to Gold, it's clear from the record's first track, "Nuclear", a radio-friendly hybrid of New Nashville and jangly college pop, that Adams intends for this record to be more than just a modest, for-the-fans compilation.</p><p>The swaggering, AM-dial rock 'n' roll of Gold is recalled in "Gimme a Sign", a wide-open space-rocker carried off with satisfactorily crunchy guitar that gets bonus points for the Byrdsian flourishes of Rickenbacker in the choruses. But "The Pink Hearts", recorded with Adams' touring band, falters, and despite its roughhewn affectations, sounds mysteriously clean for a purported demo. The ballads, thankfully, fare a bit better. The Nick Drake-flavored "You Will Always Be the Same" features sparse accompaniment from an acoustic guitar, cello, and light percussion. Lyrically, it's pretty straightforward, and it's also one of the few tracks here on which Adams is content to be himself, rather than imitating his influences. Likewise, the near-elegiac "Tomorrow" features one of most subtle and perfect harmonies I've heard recently, and despite its faulty sequencing (it really ought to have been the closer), it's by far the album's best song.</p><p>Of course, while Demolition forgoes the overproduction and even much of the shameless rock-god posturing that plagued Gold, Adams hasn't yet found his way out of his songwriting rut. This, perhaps, could be attributed to the nature of the record, since artists tend to save their best material for their official releases. But both the harmonica-driven "Hallelujah" and the highly polished "Cry on Demand", sound strikingly like many of the misfires that haunted Gold. Elsewhere, the pickin' n' grinnin' "Chin Up, Cheer Up" is a none-too-subtle rehash of Heartbreaker's "Winding Wheel". Such is the cost of prolificacy-- you can only write so many songs before they all begin to sound alike.</p><p>Now, Ryan Adams is no stranger to wearing his influences on his sleeve, and it seems like the harder rocking tracks on Demolition want to suggest a punker spirit, despite that, for the most part, it sounds as if he's traded in his Replacements LPs for John Cougar Mellencamp. Still, it's possible that Adams may overcome the somewhat pandering nature of his last two albums to release his best work to date, provided he can rediscover his muse and find a producer that better suits his music. Talent, after all, doesn't just evaporate. And despite all my bitterness at having to stare at Adams' smug, airbrushed glare every time I drive past The Gap on Franklin Street, I like to think he might end up being more than just the guy who used to write good songs.</p><p>— <strong>Alison Fields, Pitchfork</strong></p> |
| Ryan Adams | Love Is Hell Pt. 1 [Ep] | <p>Like any Ryan Adams album, Love Is Hell comes with a back-story, one that is carefully calculated to construct the enfant terrible's self-myth. Love Is Hell was intended to be the official follow-up to 2001's Gold -- the album that was not a collection of demos (that was 2002's Demolition), or the recorded-but-shelved albums 48 Hours or The Suicide Handbook, or even his alleged song-by-song cover of the Strokes' Is This It. Longtime Smiths fan that he is, Adams teamed up with John Porter -- the man who produced The Smiths, Meat Is Murder, and part of The Queen Is Dead -- with the intention of creating his own mope-rock album, hence the title Love Is Hell. Americana label that it is, Lost Highway balked at releasing a stylized tribute to Mancunian rainy-day bedsit music and didn't release it, encouraging Adams to record a different album, presumably one more in line with the label's taste. In the press and on the web, our hero spread stories about how the label claimed it was "too depressing" and "dark," thereby cultivating the myth that he's a maverick genius, while the label cheerfully countered with the defense that it just knew that our boy could do better. Eventually, a compromise was arranged: Adams kicked out a new album, the self-descriptive Rock N Roll, while releasing the equally self-descriptive Love Is Hell as two EPs, the first hitting the streets the same day as the "official" album, the second arriving a month later. Five months after that, the full-length Love Is Hell, containing both EPs plus "Anybody Wanna Take Me Home" from Rock N Roll, was released, negating the worth of the individual EPs (which were, after all, merely two halves of one album) and likely irritating legions of fans who bought both EPs.</p><p>While it took longer than necessary to have the whole bloody affair of Love Is Hell released as its own entity, it's hard not to view it as a companion piece to Rock N Roll, particularly because they're two sides of the same coin. In effect, both Rock N Roll and Love Is Hell are tribute albums, each a conscious aping of a style and sound, both designed to showcase how versatile and masterful Adams is. But since he's a synthesist more than a stylist, Adams, for all his bluster, winds up as a Zelig-styled character, taking on the characteristics of the artists he's emulating -- something that can be sonically pleasurable, but far from being the substantive work of mad genius that he relentlessly sells himself as. If Love Is Hell has the edge over Rock N Roll, it's because it's more carefully considered in its production and writing, and he manages to hide his allusions better than he does on Rock, where every title and chord progression plays like an homage. Here, he shoots for the Smiths and winds up in Jeff Buckley territory tempered with a dash of Radiohead circa The Bends. To claim that it is a dark affair is to criticize its milieu more than its substance, because the songs have the form and feel of brooding, atmospheric mope-rock, not the blood and guts of the music. Adams is fairly adept at crafting that mood -- anybody who's such a fan of rock history should be -- sometimes relying more on a blend of attitude and atmosphere instead of songwriting. Such is the fate of a stylized tribute to a style with specific sonic attributes, but Adams also does come up with a clutch of effective songs: the epic sprawl of "Political Scientist," which captures him at his best Buckley; the title track, which is nearly anthemic with its ringing guitars; the understated "World War 24"; the gently propulsive "This House Is Not for Sale," which would fit nicely between a Julian Cope and Morrissey track on a college radio show from the late '80s. "English Girls Approximately" is an effective Bob Dylan and Paul Westerberg fusion, and the closer, "Hotel Chelsea Nights," is one of his best songs, a mildly anthemic soulful anthem with vague overtones of "Purple Rain." Nevertheless, it's telling that the best song here is a cover of Oasis' "Wonderwall." It's a well-done cover but not much of a reinvention -- Adams uses Noel Gallagher's solo acoustic version of the song as a template, replacing strumming with fingerpicked guitars and altering the phrasing slightly -- which is why the song itself shines through so strongly: it resonates how the other songs are intended to, but don't. While it doesn't fatally hurt Love Is Hell, since it is an effective mood piece, it does undercut it, revealing how Adams delivers the sizzle but not the steak.</p><p>—<strong>Stephen Thomas Erlewine</strong></p> |
| Ryan Adams | Love Is Hell Parts I & II | <p>Like any Ryan Adams album, Love Is Hell comes with a back-story, one that is carefully calculated to construct the enfant terrible's self-myth. Love Is Hell was intended to be the official follow-up to 2001's Gold -- the album that was not a collection of demos (that was 2002's Demolition), or the recorded-but-shelved albums 48 Hours or The Suicide Handbook, or even his alleged song-by-song cover of the Strokes' Is This It. Longtime Smiths fan that he is, Adams teamed up with John Porter -- the man who produced The Smiths, Meat Is Murder, and part of The Queen Is Dead -- with the intention of creating his own mope-rock album, hence the title Love Is Hell. Americana label that it is, Lost Highway balked at releasing a stylized tribute to Mancunian rainy-day bedsit music and didn't release it, encouraging Adams to record a different album, presumably one more in line with the label's taste. In the press and on the web, our hero spread stories about how the label claimed it was "too depressing" and "dark," thereby cultivating the myth that he's a maverick genius, while the label cheerfully countered with the defense that it just knew that our boy could do better. Eventually, a compromise was arranged: Adams kicked out a new album, the self-descriptive Rock N Roll, while releasing the equally self-descriptive Love Is Hell as two EPs, the first hitting the streets the same day as the "official" album, the second arriving a month later. Five months after that, the full-length Love Is Hell, containing both EPs plus "Anybody Wanna Take Me Home" from Rock N Roll, was released, negating the worth of the individual EPs (which were, after all, merely two halves of one album) and likely irritating legions of fans who bought both EPs.</p><p>While it took longer than necessary to have the whole bloody affair of Love Is Hell released as its own entity, it's hard not to view it as a companion piece to Rock N Roll, particularly because they're two sides of the same coin. In effect, both Rock N Roll and Love Is Hell are tribute albums, each a conscious aping of a style and sound, both designed to showcase how versatile and masterful Adams is. But since he's a synthesist more than a stylist, Adams, for all his bluster, winds up as a Zelig-styled character, taking on the characteristics of the artists he's emulating -- something that can be sonically pleasurable, but far from being the substantive work of mad genius that he relentlessly sells himself as. If Love Is Hell has the edge over Rock N Roll, it's because it's more carefully considered in its production and writing, and he manages to hide his allusions better than he does on Rock, where every title and chord progression plays like an homage. Here, he shoots for the Smiths and winds up in Jeff Buckley territory tempered with a dash of Radiohead circa The Bends. To claim that it is a dark affair is to criticize its milieu more than its substance, because the songs have the form and feel of brooding, atmospheric mope-rock, not the blood and guts of the music. Adams is fairly adept at crafting that mood -- anybody who's such a fan of rock history should be -- sometimes relying more on a blend of attitude and atmosphere instead of songwriting. Such is the fate of a stylized tribute to a style with specific sonic attributes, but Adams also does come up with a clutch of effective songs: the epic sprawl of "Political Scientist," which captures him at his best Buckley; the title track, which is nearly anthemic with its ringing guitars; the understated "World War 24"; the gently propulsive "This House Is Not for Sale," which would fit nicely between a Julian Cope and Morrissey track on a college radio show from the late '80s. "English Girls Approximately" is an effective Bob Dylan and Paul Westerberg fusion, and the closer, "Hotel Chelsea Nights," is one of his best songs, a mildly anthemic soulful anthem with vague overtones of "Purple Rain." Nevertheless, it's telling that the best song here is a cover of Oasis' "Wonderwall." It's a well-done cover but not much of a reinvention -- Adams uses Noel Gallagher's solo acoustic version of the song as a template, replacing strumming with fingerpicked guitars and altering the phrasing slightly -- which is why the song itself shines through so strongly: it resonates how the other songs are intended to, but don't. While it doesn't fatally hurt Love Is Hell, since it is an effective mood piece, it does undercut it, revealing how Adams delivers the sizzle but not the steak.</p><p>— <strong>Stephen Thomas Erlewine</strong></p><hr/><p>If anyone out there is still wondering just how Ryan Adams can be so prolific, maybe it's because the urgency of his situation compels him to strike while the iron is hot. It took his former band, Whiskeytown, seven years to release a trio of critically revered albums, and his first solo record, 2000's Heartbreaker, was in the works for half that. But when Heartbreaker saw release, and was promptly met with virtually unanimous critical praise, Adams clearly became inspired and quickly turned out sixteen new tracks for a sophomore record—the rushed, overproduced Gold—which came with a bonus disc sporting five tracks in the more stripped vein of the album's predecessor. And when that album scored Adams a commercial alternative radio hit in the well-timed "New York, New York", he descended into a recording fervor that continues, unabated, to this day.</p><p>Irrational outbursts and public meltdowns aside, Adams is, at heart, an extremely gifted songwriter who just doesn't realize that what he really needs is to take a deep breath and slow the fuck down. During the course of the past two years, he's released a collection of demos (Demolition), and a 21-track side project called The Finger with ex-D Generation frontman Jesse Malin (the "double-album" We Are Fuck You/Punk's Dead Let's Fuck). He's currently planning a box set titled Career Ender, which will be crammed with five discs of the songs he's discarded since Gold dropped two years ago. And that's not even taking into account the four-tracked blues version of The Strokes' album Is This It that he's said to have recorded. Did I mention his collaborations with Beth Orton and Emmylou Harris? How about the track he co-wrote for the Counting Crows? His session work with Lucinda Williams and Alejandro Escovedo? His production work on Jesse Malin's solo album? I think you get the point. The question is: why doesn't he?</p><p>Adams originally intended Love Is Hell as his official third full-length, but his label, Lost Highway, scoffed when he handed in the tapes. Initially, he planned to rework it, but then agreed to dashing off a glossy, radio-friendlier full-length (the disasterous Rock N Roll), provided the label would also make room on their release schedule for a secondary release for Love Is Hell. It's easy to see why Lost Highway balked: an insincere, smugly posturing Ryan Adams who lives up to his stage persona by creating an album like Rock N Roll simply had to have been preferable to the miserable, slobbering woe-is-me shtick he plays up here. At least when he was wearing the proverbial alt-country tag, his balancing act of conceitedness and overemoting was halfway convincing. Unfortunately, just as the caricature-laden excesses of Rock N Roll aped garage-rockers and postmortem Rock Hall of Famers, Love Is Hell reaches for the dripping, maudlin sentimentality of Rufus Wainwright or a mock Jeff Buckley.</p><p>It's a shock, given that the press surrounding the Love Is Hell sessions had pegged the record as Adams' return to the sparse, two-in-the-morning flair of his debut—and when Lost Highway postponed the recordings, calling them "too dark," it only heightened the expectations of optimistic fans hoping for a stark, brooding future classic. Of course, it did seem something of an enigma as well: Adams' music, after all, had always faired best with pared-down arrangements making room for his own brand of confessional singer/songwriter groveling (e.g. Heartbreaker standouts "Call Me on Your Way Back Home" and "Come Pick Me Up"); shelving Ryan Adams for being too dark seemed to make about as much sense as shelving Kraftwerk for being too German.</p><p>But while it's safe to say that these EPs are certainly dark—at least in contrast to Rock N Roll and even parts of Gold—they fail to capture the striking imagery and confident vocals of which Adams seemed a master on Heartbreaker. For example, Love Is Hell's opening, piano-led "Political Scientist", replaces Adams' confessional, first-person narratives with a third-person tale that indicts the government for supplying cocaine, and candy factories for poisoning the environment. Conspiracy theories aside, playing Greenpeace spokesman is not Adams' strong suit; he attempts the political profundity of a Thom Yorke and comes off like a diet Chris Martin.</p><p>And if Adams fails to adopt Yorke's political relevance, he'll settle for the Radiohead frontman's melismatics—Love Is Hell is riddled with Adams' unabashed aping of Yorke's signature fragmented lyrical style. On the lethargic lite-country stomp of "This House Is Not for Sale", Adams repeatedly pleads, "Calm down/ Just calm down," the emotional resonance of which verges on laughable. Meanwhile, the sleepy, acoustic blather of "Afraid Not Scared" has Adams repeatedly confessing that he is "really dying in here," and just wants to be "let down," sounding about as genuinely distraught as Ja Rule sounds genuinely "gangsta."</p><p>The eight songs that constitute Love Is Hell, Pt. 1 seem intentionally built around a studio version of Adams' infamous live staple, a cover of the Oasis hit "Wonderwall". Acclaimed Smiths producer John Porter unfortunately buries Adams beneath a sobering wall of reverb, which drains the song of its spirited pop ingenuity and transforms its nonsensical lyrics into some sort of momentous, self-important dirge. Consequently, "Wonderwall" seems emblematic of the rest of the disc, a collection of preposterously cheerless (and charmless) songs that try much too hard to achieve a poignancy—or anything, really—that might hide their complete insignificance.</p><p>As Love Is Hell, Pt. 1 resoundingly proves, Adams is at his finest when he sticks to the subject matter he knows best: broken hearts and bar fights. Given this, it's no shock that the highlight of this entire project comes with the Dylanesque Beth Orton kiss-off "English Girls Approximately". Appearing halfway into Love Is Hell, Pt. 2, the song is classic Adams, brimming with his smug wit (sample lyric: "You said you didn't love me, it was right on time/ I was just about to tell you, but ok, alright") and unabashed, acoustic guitar-driven ecstasy. As Marianne Faithful lends her austere vocal harmonies to the chorus, it serves as a breathtaking reminder of the chemistry Adams shared with Emmylou Harris on Heartbreaker's divine ballad, "Oh, My Sweet Carolina".</p><p>Another highlight of Love Is Hell, Pt. 2 is its closing R&B; vamp, "Chelsea Nights". Over a bed of radiating Wurlitzer chords and bluesy guitar fills, Adams narrates a night spent aimlessly wandering New York City's unfeeling winter streets, searching for the love he always manages to lose. The track, which peaks with Adams' plaintive confession, "I played your song/ I got the melody all wrong," is filled with the self-awareness, irony, and despondency that's made Adams' best work so moving, all the way back to his Whiskeytown days; it's a shame he forces his listeners to wade through a glut of unsalvageable crap-rock to arrive at it.</p><p>Indeed, these two tracks are anomalies—happy accidents, or moments of clarity—amongst the overbearing melodrama of the bulk of material contained on Love Is Hell, Pt. 2. "Thank You Louise" serves as the harrowing antithesis to these diamonds in the rough, an atrocious slice of sloppy sentimentality in which Adams sings, over an unnecessarily bloated string section, of a mother receiving news of her son's death. For a guy who's attained uncommon levels of infamy by simply being a sarcastic fucking prick all the time, he pours on the schmaltz here like he studied under Air Supply. The Joy Division rip-off "City Rain, City Streets" is so bereft of any humor that its megalomania challenges even Conor Oberst: Adams crams nearly four minutes of distorted new-wave guitars and gratuitous reverb into this shudder-inducing display of shamelessness, proudly spouting disasters like, "I fucked you over a million times," and, "You died, you died, you really died."</p><p>Listening to these discs, one can only imagine the myriad reasons Lost Highway decided to release the Love Is Hell sessions not as one spiraling, abysmal full-length, but as a pair of EPs (let alone why they shelved it to make way for Rock N Roll instead). The obvious, cynical answer is that it wouldn't detract from the publicity they were expecting Rock N Roll to receive. But it's also easy to envision the label's creative heads considering how spreading the material out might help conceal the songs' alarmingly empty sentiments. The sad fact is, no marketing strategy, no matter how savvy, could conceal this collection's bathetic, overwrought travesties and gruesome failures. In the midst of this mess, both Adams and Lost Highway come out losers: one critical car-wreck might have been manageable, but they may not recover from two.</p><p>— <strong>Hartley Goldstein, Pitchfork</strong></p> |
| Ryan Adams | Cold Roses | <p>Last time we received a dispatch from Ryan Adams, the self-styled savior of rock & roll, it was in 2003, when he delivered his straight-up rock & roll record (aptly titled <i>Rock N Roll</i>) and his two-part mope-rock EP (later combined as one LP) <i>Love Is Hell</i>. Admirable records both, but not quite the sequel to <i>Heartbreaker</i> that fans craved. They also weren't quite as successful as all the hype surrounding their release suggested that they would be, so Adams briefly retreated from the spotlight to regroup, heading back in 2005 with a planned triptych of new albums, the first of which is the double-album <i>Cold Roses</i>, recorded with his new backing band the Cardinals and released at the beginning of May. Three albums in one year is overkill even for an artist predisposed to releasing his every whim, and while it's too early at this writing to judge whether he needed to release all three of the records, it's safe to say that <i>Cold Roses</i> is the record many fans have been waiting to hear -- a full-fledged, unapologetic return to the country-rock that made his reputation when he led Whiskeytown. Not that the album is a retreat, or a crass attempt to give the people what they want, but it's an assured, comfortable collection of 18 songs that play to Adams' strengths because they capture him not trying quite so hard.</p> <p>He settles into a warm, burnished, countryish groove not far removed from vintage Harvest-era Neil Young at the beginning and keeps it going over the course of a double-disc set that isn't all that long. With the first disc clocking in at 39:39 and the second at 36:29, this could easily have been released as a single-disc set, but splitting it into two and packaging it as a mock-gatefold LP is classic Ryan Adams, highlighting both his flair for rock classicism and his tendency to come across slightly affected. As always, he's so obsessive about fitting into classic rock's long lineage that he can be slightly embarrassing -- particularly on the intro to "Beautiful Sorta," which apes David Johansen's intro to the New York Dolls' "Looking for a Kiss" in a way that guarantees a cringe -- which is also a problem when he drifts toward lazy, profanity-riddled lyrics ("this sh*t just f*cks you up" on "Cherry Lane") that undercut a generally strong set of writing. But what makes <i>Cold Roses</i> a success, his first genuine one since <i>Heartbreaker</i>, is that it is a genuine band album, with the Cardinals not only getting co-writing credits but helping Adams relax and let the music flow naturally. It's not the sound of somebody striving to save rock & roll, or even to be important, but that's precisely why this is the easiest Ryan Adams to enjoy. The coming months with their coming LPs will reveal whether this is indeed a shift in his point of view, or just a brief break from his trademark blustering braggadocio.</p><p>— <strong>Stephen Thomas Erlewine</strong></p><hr/><p>In late 2001, Ryan Adams was inadvertently anointed the face-du-jour for "alt-country," an idea scraped off the ink-smeared pages of No Depression and tremulously shot into semi-mainstream consciousness by an over-jubilant, rural-romanticizing press: Adams' "breakthrough" record, Gold, turned out to be a lot more alt-rock than alt-country, and its proper, non-demo follow-up, 2003's spastic Rock N Roll, ditched the pedal steel altogether, embracing, instead, overblown riffs and smarmy vocal mugging. Cold Roses, which follows two weepy acoustic EPs (2003's Love Is Hell Parts One and Two), sees Adams trudging back to his country roots, turning up the twang, curling his cowboy boots into cold, east village pavement, and transforming his frantic yawps into star-fed cries.</p><p>Even for Adams' most zealous fans, hunting down new material has never been a particularly pressing concern: The two-disc Cold Roses is one of (a vaguely audacious) three full-length releases planned for 2005 (Jacksonville City Nights is slated to arrive this summer, with 29 expected in the fall), and while Adams has never been an especially sharp judge of his own work, Cold Roses suffers considerably from its double-disc conceit. Overstuffed and vaguely monotonous, the album could be easily whittled down to a single sequence of impressive songs; Instead, it's a meandering, occasionally moving series of mid-tempo laments, some more memorable than others.</p><p>Despite ample backing by the Cardinals (guitarists J.P. Bowersock and Cindy Cashdollar, drummer Brad Pemberton, and bassist Catherine Popper; with singer-songwriter Rachael Yamagata, formerly of Chicago's Bumpus, taking guest turns on "Cold Roses" and "Let It Ride"), Cold Roses doesn't feel particularly collaborative; followers of Adams' solo work will recognize loads of parallels to Adams' post-Whiskeytown, 2000 solo debut, Heartbreaker (minus the punk throwdowns).</p><p>Cold Roses' most palpable reference point may be American Beauty-era Grateful Dead: Excellent opener "Magnolia Mountain" mixes slow, "Box of Rain" melancholy ("If the morning don't come/ Will you lie to me?/ Will you take me to your bed and lay me down?") with Adams' trademark guitar scrapes and sandpapered howls, while "Cold Roses" is packed with giddy guitar noodling and jam-friendly interludes (even Adams' vocals seem deliberately Garcia-infused, straining and paper-thin, careening off into a smoke-filled sunset.) Meanwhile, nearly every bit of electric guitar on Cold Roses sounds as though it was plucked straight from Dick's vault, all wiggly solos and playful licks, unintentional and woozy.</p><p>Lead single "Let It Ride" bounces, proudly shuffling through a laundry-list of country requirements: whining steel guitar, longing mentions of Tennessee and Carolina, nods to the Cumberland River and ferryboats, big, lonesome wails. But "Let It Ride" also employs plenty of weird, Ennio Morricone-inspired western guitar whirls, and Adams' coaxing vocals are undeniable, charmingly sincere and innocent: The resulting song is properly engaging, more classic country than alt-anything.</p><p>"Cherry Lane" employs honky-tonk yawping and girl-gone words ("The glass/ It hits the floor" is accompanied by requisite glass-shattering sound effects), while the preciously titled "How Do You Keep Love Alive" mopes along, wearied and oddly pretty, half-sung over a languishing piano line. Adams' songwriting proclivities have always flirted with MOR, adult-alternative sappiness, but for the most part, Cold Roses is clever and uncommonly listenable, far less bombastic and contrived than its predecessor. Even lyrically, Adams is modest and cautiously confessional, careful to avoid the cocky caterwauling that invades much of his back catalogue.</p><p>Tellingly, Cold Roses is the first Ryan Adams record not to feature a picture of him on the cover; it's increasingly difficult to say exactly when Adams transitioned from bloated media darling to scrappy underdog, but it happened, and he commandeered the passage all by himself, squirming away from the overblown antics of yesteryear and embracing, instead, the staid earnestness of his roots. It's a welcome return.</p><p>— <strong>Amanda Petrusich, Pitchfork</strong></p> |
| Ryan Adams | Jacksonville City Nights | <p>Ever since the big, splashy Gold failed to make Ryan Adams an all-conquering superstar -- it bolstered his reputation as a rock critic darling, but never had the sales to match the press -- he's retreated to genre exercises, beginning with the sleek modern rock of 2003's Rock N Roll and its moody alt-rock counterpart, Love Is Hell, carrying through to his Neil Young/Grateful Dead pastiche on his spring 2005 double album, Cold Roses, and now its autumn sequel, Jacksonville City Nights. Arriving a little over four months after Cold Roses as the second installment of a planned trilogy of 2005 releases, Jacksonville City Nights -- which at one point was going to be called the less-evocative but calendar-specific September -- is Adams' straight-up, straight-ahead country album, a lean 46-minute collection of 14 songs designed for late-night drinking. While the terrific cover art deliberately echoes classic '60s country LPs, the sound of the album isn't quite as honky tonk as that suggests, thanks to a handful of brooding numbers like "September" that are too introspective, lyric-centered, and light on melody to truly qualify as classicist country. These are the weakest moments here, but they're also the exception to the rule, since most of the songs here represent a number of classic country archetypes, from the opening pair of barroom anthems, "A Kiss Before I Go" and "The End," to his "Dear John" duet with Norah Jones or the light hillbilly swagger of the galloping "Trains" and how "My Heart Is Broken" is sweetened by just enough swings to give it a candy coating but not enough to turn it into countrypolitan schmaltz. As good as these cuts sound, it's still hard not to shake the suspicion that Ryan Adams is primarily a pastiche artist, since it's not only easy to spot influences throughout the album, but because the atmosphere of the record makes more of an impression than the individual songs. That said, Jacksonville City Nights still ranks as one of Adams' stronger albums, not just because he's returning to his rootsy roots -- after all, this isn't alt-country, this is pure country -- but because it maintains a consistent mood, is tightly edited and well sequenced, and thanks to the Cardinals, has the easy assurance of Cold Roses, which is preferable to the somewhat desperate feel of the records immediately following Heartbreaker. It may not all add up to a major statement, which is something Gold and Rock N Roll aspired to be, but it surely makes for a more likeable and ultimately more listenable album.</p>— <b>Stephen Thomas Erlewine</b> |
| Duane Allman | Anthology | <p>Duane Allman's greatness was apparent on his recordings with the Allman Brothers, yet there was another side to the superb guitarist. For many years, he was a highly respected session musician, playing on cuts by Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, King Curtis, Boz Scaggs, Delaney & Bonnie, and Clarence Carter, among others. By including those session cuts, as well as a sampling of his brief sojourn in Eric Clapton's Derek and the Dominoes and a few rare solo tracks, along with a number of representative Allman Brothers songs, the double-album Anthology winds up drawing a complete portrait of Allman. He may have recorded plenty of other material worth hearing, but this has the bare essentials for an excellent introduction and retrospective.</p><p>—<strong>Stephen Thomas Erlewine</strong></p> |
| Greg Allman | Laid Back | <p>Recorded in the same year as the Brothers and Sisters album, this solo debut release is a beautiful amalgam of R&B, folk, and gospel sounds, with the best singing on any of Gregg Allman's solo releases. He covers his own "Midnight Rider" in a more mournful, dirge-like manner, and Jackson Browne's "These Days" gets its most touching and tragic-sounding rendition as well. Although Chuck Leavell and Jaimoe are here, there's very little that sounds like the Allman Brothers Band -- prominent guitars, apart from a few licks by Tommy Talton (Cowboy, ex-We the People), are overlooked in favor of gospel-tinged organ and choruses behind Allman's soulful singing.</p><p>—<strong>Bruce Eder</strong></p> |
| Greg Allman | Low Country Blues | <p>Given his place in the pantheon of American rock music, Gregg Allman's solo career away from the Allman Brothers Band has been generally disappointing. Perhaps that's why it took nearly a decade between his previous album, 1997's Searching for Simplicity (its title alone indicates his frustrations) and 1988's over-produced yet underwhelming Just Before the Bullets Fly. A whopping 14 years later, Allman joins forces with roots producer to the stars T-Bone Burnett, hoping that some of the latter's mojo can rub off on a singer who is one of the great white soul and blues vocalists in rock music. For the most part it does, as the duo choose 11 relatively obscure covers from classic artists such as Bobby "Blue" Bland, Junior Wells, and B.B. King that have clearly influenced Allman's musical approach. The backing is organic but far from stripped-down with horns, multiple guitars, and even background vocalists supporting the singer's patented crusty growl. From the opening raw thump of the ominous Sleepy John Estes' "Floating Bridge" to a peppy yet intense take on Muddy Waters' "I Can't be Satisfied" and a fiery reworking of Magic Sam's "My Love Is Your Love," Allman sounds invested and inspired by this material and his musical surroundings.</p><p>Veterans such as Dr. John (credited here with his real name, Mac Rebennack), Doyle Bramhall II, and Burnett's often used rhythm section of drummer Jay Bellerose and Dennis Crouch on bass keep a taut yet easygoing lock on the groove. That's particularly evident on the predominantly acoustic version of Skip James' "Devil Got My Woman." The horns that appear on five tunes never overpower the sound yet help propel Allman's soul-searing performance of Bland's "Blind Man." Ditto for Otis Rush's slow blues "Checking on My Baby," which brings the vocalist back to his "Stormy Monday"-styled beginnings. One original co-written with Allman Brothers Band guitarist Warren Haynes, "Just Another Rider," while not a terrible song, pales in comparison with the rest of the material and could have been saved for the next Brothers album, where it might make a better fit. Allman is credited with B-3 on the majority of the tunes, but his contributions are generally mixed so low as to be nearly inaudible. His organ can be heard on a low-down run-through of Amos Milburn's "Tears, Tears, Tears" that captures a sweet, jazzy noir West Coast blues. It adds up to Allman's best and surely most focused and cohesive solo release, and one where the template can hopefully be repeated in less time than it took this to appear.</p><p>—<strong>Hal Horowitz</strong></p> |
Showing 1–20 of 2096 reviews
· Page 1 of 105