Heartbreaker

Mixing the heartfelt angst of a singer/songwriter with the cocky brashness of a garage rocker, Ryan Adams is at once one of the few artists to emerge from the alt-country scene to achieve mainstream commercial success and the one who most strongly refused to be defined by the genre, leaping from one spot to another stylistically while following his increasingly prolific muse. Adams was born in Jacksonville, North Carolina in 1974. While country music was a major part of his family's musical diet when he was young (he's cited Loretta Lynn, George Jones, Merle Haggard, and Johnny Cash as particular favorites), in his early teens Adams developed a taste for punk rock and began playing electric guitar.

At 15, Adams started writing songs, and a year later he formed a band called the Patty Duke Syndrome; Adams once described PDS as "an arty noise punk band," with Hüsker Dü frequently cited as a key influence and reference point. the Patty Duke Syndrome developed a following in Jacksonville, and when Adams was 19 the band relocated to the larger town of Raleigh, North Carolina in hopes of expanding its following. However, Adams became eager to do something more melodic that would give him a platform for his country and pop influences. In 1994, Adams left the Patty Duke Syndrome and formed Whiskeytown with guitarist Phil Wandscher and violinist Caitlin Cary. With bassist Steve Grothman and drummer Eric "Skillet" Gilmore completing the lineup, Whiskeytown (the name came from regional slang for getting drunk) released their first album, Faithless Street, on the local Mood Food label.

The album won reams of critical praise in the music press, and more than one writer suggested that Whiskeytown could do for the alt-country or No Depression scene what Nirvana had done for grunge. But by the time Whiskeytown had signed to a major label -- the Geffen-distributed imprint Outpost Records -- the band had undergone the first in a series of major personal shakeups, and in the summer of 1997, when Whiskeytown's Outpost debut, Stranger's Almanac, was ready for release, Adams and Wandscher were the only official members of the group left. Cary soon returned, but Wandscher left shortly afterward, and Whiskeytown had a revolving-door lineup for much of the next two years, with the band's live shows become increasingly erratic, as solid performances were often followed by noisy, audience-baiting disasters. Consequently, as strong as Stranger's Almanac was, Whiskeytown never fulfilled the commercial expectations created for them by others. In 1999, the band -- which was down to Adams, Cary, and a handful of session musicians -- recorded its third and final album, Pneumonia, but when Geffen was absorbed in a merger between PolyGram and Universal, Outpost was phased out, and the album was shelved; shortly afterward, Whiskeytown quietly called it quits.

Following Whiskeytown's collapse, Adams wasted no time launching a career apart from the band, and after a few solo acoustic tours, Adams went into a Nashville studio with songwriters Gillian Welch and David Rawlings and cut his first album under his own name, Heartbreaker, which was released by pioneering "insurgent country" label Bloodshot Records in 2000. The album received critical raves, respectable sales, and a high-profile endorsement from Elton John, and Adams was signed by Universal's new Americana imprint, Lost Highway Records. Lost Highway gave Whiskeytown's Pneumonia a belated release in early 2001, and later that same year the label released his second solo set, Gold, which displayed less of a country influence in favor of classic pop and rock styles of the 1970s. In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the album's opening track, "New York, New York," was embraced by radio as an anthem of resilience (though it actually concerned a busted romance), and Adams once again found himself touted as "the next big thing."

Always a prolific songwriter, in a bit more than a year following Gold's release, Adams had written and recorded enough material for four albums. He opted to whittle the 60 tunes down to a 13-song collection called Demolition, which was released in 2002 as he went into the studio to record his official follow-up to Gold. A year later, Adams' concept album Rock N Roll was released alongside the double-EP collection Love Is Hell. Tours around the globe kept Adams busy into the next year as he maintained momentum writing songs and keeping his ever-changing presence in the music press. In May 2005, Adams released his first of three albums for Lost Highway, the melancholic double-disc Cold Roses. Jacksonville City Nights, a more classic-sounding honky tonk effort, followed in September, and 29 appeared in late December. Always prolific, in the interim period before his next album was released Adams posted a large selection of tracks -- including several hip-hop tunes -- on his website, but fans were greeted with more straightforward material on 2007's Easy Tiger and 2008's Cardinology with the Cardinals.

Adams decided to disband the Cardinals in 2009, precipitating an unusual period of quiet from the prolific singer/songwriter. He slowly returned to active duty in 2010, releasing the heavy metal Orion on vinyl-only in the summer and then issuing III/IV -- a double album recorded with the Cardinals during the Easy Tiger sessions -- in November. For his 13th solo album, 2011's Ashes and Fire, the singer/songwriter recruited Norah Jones and Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers' keyboard player Benmont Tench, as well as legendary producer Glyn Johns, who helmed the Who classic Who's Next.

— Mark Deming

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.

— Mark Deming

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**.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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").

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.

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.

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.

— Steven Byrd, Pitchfork