Ryan Adams - 'Ashes & Fire'
For an artist as prolific as Ryan Adams it was a foregone conclusion that his break from music in 2009 would be short lived, and as expected here he is with album number thirteen - "Ashes & Fire" - that is fit to assuage the thirst of even his most devoted fan.
A lot of soul-searching has clearly been done since 2009 and his split from The Cardinals, and while he has come back refreshed from his 'sabbatical' it was definitely not spent pursuing a new musical direction with no game-changing Kid A or electrified Dylan in sight. However, with "Ashes & Fire" Adams is back to his post-Whiskeytown best.
"Ashes & Fire" impresses upon the listener the timeless appeal of Adams' brand of blue collar folk-pop Americana, an appeal that draws upon the universal themes of love ('Come Home'), man's metaphysical and existential struggle best exemplified by 'Save Me' - "what am I doing here/ there's just too much pain/ Somebody save me..." - and Adams' ever-present thematic osteoporosis-resistant backbone of loosely concealed misery.
Opener 'Dirty Rain' sees its creator picking through the rubble of what went before, when he was "dancing in the dirty rain" and when "the needle pulled the record round and the walls they caved in". It doesn't take a genius to see through the metaphors and note that this is an artist making peace with a life that just a year ago was falling apart ("last time I was here it was raining, it ain't raining anymore"). He's sending out a message loud and clear; that he's back, clean and better than than we've seen him for a while.
The title track follows and is a masterclass in sun-kissed country imbued blues, which perfectly juxtaposes with its predecessor proving that now "cool and silvery eyes" have taken the place of dirty rain and needles all wrapped up in a ditty about a woman's love. 'Coming Home' follows and shows Ryan Adams' sweeter side in this pining ode to a lover long gone while 'Rocks' displays his fallibility and an unusual optimism for an artist, the career of which is so steeped in melancholia.
However, this feeling of optimism is later contradicted by 'Lucky Now' which serves to remind the listener that all is not yet right in the Adams camp - "I feel like someone I don't know/ am I really what I want to be"; an ironically heartening statement as this inherent discontentment has been the gasoline on his prodigious talent.
'Do I wait' is the perfect example of what can be achieved when this kind of talent comes into contact with the likes of producer Glyn Johns ((The Beatles, Bob Dylan, The Clash and The Rolling Stones) which builds brick by brick from soft as snow pared down vocal simplicity to soaring guitar driven choruses and back again. 'Kindness' is a different beast altogether and follows pop's songwriting handbook a little closer and is the closest this sedate album comes to a sing-a-long track.
It is true that this album has a range of material, it's just that the range is too narrow and sometimes it feels like the tracks merge into one another too easily leaving it hard to find songs that really stand out. Adams' latest creation is really very enjoyable, preferably while sitting back with a glass of wine at the end of a hard day at the coal face, but one criticism would be its meandering lack of direction and the lack of excitement. To be honest, at times it feels like being sat at the end of a production line though with a personal background attached (singer comes clean, returns to form etc.), but we're still painting by numbers here and with such a prolific output it would be easy to let the odd album slip by unnoticed.
That being said; with this album its troubled creator proves that great music can be made with a sober mind unaided by substance abuse and degeneracy, but it remains clear that Ryan Adams still fights with internal demons that drive him forward such as they did for the artist he is most associated with - Gram Parsons.
Eleven years since he broke onto the scene with the mesmeric 'Heartbreaker' and follow-up 'Gold' Adams is, after a lengthy period of inconsistency and troubles, back on form alighting on genres at will from the singularly Country 'Kindness' to the soulful Pop of 'Chains of Love' with an ease that is testament to his new found freedom.