Demolition

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

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, Gold, 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, Is This It?).

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, Demolition. Appropriately enough, Demolition 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 Demolition seems to lack a strong thematic or structural center.

In short, Demolition 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.

— Mark Deming, AllMusic

It's been just under a year (365 days to be exact - but this year was a leap year) since Ryan Adams released Gold, 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.

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 Demolition. (Get it? "Demo"-lition? Pretty clever, eh?)

Anyway, Demolition follows in a much similar vein as Gold, and given the quality, could have rightly been Gold'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) momentsever.

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 rock 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

— Alison Fields, Pitchfork